


Wanderlust

by darksquall, RaceUlfson



Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-31
Updated: 2012-09-07
Packaged: 2017-10-30 09:39:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 48,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/330336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darksquall/pseuds/darksquall, https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaceUlfson/pseuds/RaceUlfson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seventeen, lost and alone, Squall Leonhart is on the run from his father and Esthar - he never expected to run straight into the arms of Seifer Almasy. This chance meeting gives them a chance to bury the hatchet (Seifer/Squall eventual)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has literallly been several years in the making. Race and I have been writing this fic for longer than seems at all possible, - we've wanted to post it for so long. Now we can finally share, it still seems a little unreal. Thank you to Mangacat for listening to me talk about this fic at length, and Happy birthday sweetie.
> 
> Darksquall

**Prologue**.

“Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.”  
Dag Hammarskjold

 

**March 17th**

I could just about perch on the third rung of the maintenance ladder, if I was careful. There was little light, but even so it was more than enough for me to count the small amount of cash I had left. It did mean, however, that I was away from prying eyes and anyone who'd try to take it from me. Not that they would be able to – I still had my gunblade junction at my hip but with Esthar still out looking for me, it would be better if I didn't draw any attention to myself. Even if it was to teach an opportunistic thief a lesson they deserved.

The evening was already turning cold, but fortunately not as cold as it had been some nights. If I found the right spot, I could probably sleep out in the open with what little supplies I'd picked up along the way and save myself some money. The bus didn't leave until mid morning. Hell, the ticket office didn't even open until the morning, maybe I could curl up in one of the ridiculous plastic chairs and get some rest in the station itself. The sound of them opening up would wake me and I'd be sure to get my ticket and get back on the road.

Two weeks. I'd been on the run for two weeks and I was already rapidly running out of the money I'd been able to withdraw from my bank.

Even when I'd been lost in time, I'd felt less lonely than I did at that very moment.

Back home, in Balamb, it would be a little after lunch. Ma Dincht would have sent a batch of cupcakes up for Zell's birthday and Selphie would be proposing toast after toast, following people around with a camera at an impromptu birthday party – just as she had for Irvine back in November, and Quistis before that. She'd probably be wearing Irvine's hat and making Zell open birthday presents. He'd be laughing and grinning, probably hamming it up for the camera. Choking on a hot dog.

They didn't need me at all.

I folded up my wallet and stuffed it back into my pocket. I was being stupid again – I needed to stop thinking like that. They'd welcome me back eventually, when I was eighteen and there was nothing Loire could do about it. I wasn't sure what I would do when the time came. Going back to SeeD sounded impossible. Especially after what had happened when I'd been marched out of the building like a prisoner, I didn't even know if I'd been discharged permanently or temporarily.

Whichever it was, I wouldn't be finding out for another five months or so anyway.

I was alone. Again. To think, months before I'd wanted it that way. Now all I wanted was to go back to having my friends around me. I was pathetic.

I swung down from the maintenance ladder and picked up my back pack. That was starting to feel worryingly light as well. I should pick up some more rations as soon as I could, there were a couple of larger towns on the next bus route and in a week or so I'd be in Deling city before I moved south to get lost again. It'd be cheaper and safer to pick them up in the larger towns. If I timed it right I wouldn't even have to leave the bus station and risk Esthar's spies seeing me in Deling.

As I pulled the back pack onto my shoulders, I straightened just in time to see Seifer Almasy walk past. I kept to the shadows of course, Seifer and I meeting after some time apart almost always resulted in a news worthy clash and I didn't need that any time soon. Then he was followed three garden kids – not from my garden. Trabians, they must have been down here for a test or AWOL or something.

Hyne, what had he gotten himself into this time?

If I kept out of sight, maybe I could just find out what was going on. I didn't need to interfere unless I had no other choice.

Dragging the maintenance ladder back down, I climbed up it to the roof and edged my away along the bricks behind the steel facing work. Crouching low, I could see the three students, and Seifer. He looked... tired. Different. He wasn't wearing the trench coat any more, not even the tattered one that he'd had in the last days of the war and oddly, he didn't really look like _my_ Seifer.

He looked broken.

I crept as close as I could to listen.


	2. Chapter One

**Chapter One.**

“True friends stab you in the front.”  
Oscar Wilde

 

**March 17th**

 

The corrugated steel wall of the bus terminal felt cold at his back.

He'd been working his way through a bottle of vodka, the warming liquid lighting a fire in his belly that reminded him of Ifrit's heat, a power he’d long since left behind. Along with his old life, and his trench coat, that power belonged to a time before; a time when he'd been someone, not just a shadow flitting between towns on a clapped out motorcycle, hoping that he wouldn't be recognized before he'd had time to refuel the bike and gather some supplies.

 

Seifer looked up at the boys who'd ordered him out of the bus station's bar. The glitter of the Garden insignia on their collars denoted them as students, from the ruined Trabia Garden in fact. If it had been Balamb, or even Galbadia, he'd have ignored them and carried on drinking but Trabia and what had happened lingered on Seifer’s conscience; he found he couldn't forgive himself for that episode of his service just yet. Too many lives lost, too many people hurt. Too many of his own kind, orphans with no parents to mourn them, namelessly lost to time.

"You shoulda died along with your bitch sorceress, Almasy," the leader of the boys sneered, drawing a sword from his junction point. The blade glittered dully in the last of the late evening light, dark steel that curved into three wicked barbs at the end, designed purely for tearing flesh. "The world woulda been better off."

Three, he could only see three but he could have sworn there were more inside. Really more than enough to take out one lone, broken knight, Seifer supposed. "Yeah, I agree. But so far Hyne has only sent little baby pussies like you guys to take me out, so.... I suffer on." He clutched his chest as though he had been wounded, thankful for the wall at his back to keep him upright as he played the victim for the crowd. Seifer was slightly surprised by the fact that he actually meant what he said.

The leader of the three boys - they couldn't be much more than a year younger than he was, when had Seifer started thinking of himself as old? It had crept up on him sometime after the war, that was for sure – smirked at him coldly.

Seifer almost snickered. He could smirk better than that in his sleep.

“We can fix that right here,” the leader of the three boys turned his sword slowly, just a small, slow movement that made the light follow the sweeping curve of the blade and flare on the barbs.

Out of the corner of his eye, Seifer could have sworn he saw a familiar flash of cerulean blue. He couldn’t place it, the colour was familiar but the source of that familiarity danced out of his grasp on alcohol and exhaustion fuelled wings. Besides, he didn’t care. Not any more.

The boy, cheered on by his two companions, lunged for him. The way his dark brown hair shifted as he darted forward, his bangs tumbling into his eyes, reminded him of Squall. He’d never understood how Squall could keep his hair so long.

He didn’t consciously choose to evade the strike. In fact, Seifer didn’t want to dodge it, but the reflexes he’d honed in battle, the years of training day in and day out, had better ideas and he dodged, twisting to the side quickly.

Not fast enough to avoid the bite of the wicked blade, however, and he hissed softly in pain, gritting his teeth as he clutched his bicep. Not serious, but noticeable, Seifer could feel the blood welling up and flowing through the press of his fingers.

Another flash of blue caught Seifer’s eye and he looked up. He didn’t care that the Trabian student was lifting his blade again, nor did he notice that the others had fallen silent. He could only watch, speechless for perhaps the first time in his life, as Squall Leonhart leapt from the low roof of the bus station behind him and landed, gunblade drawn and glittering an eerie blue.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” Squall said, his voice colder than diamond dust.

He could practically feel the anger radiating from Squall, even though they weren’t touching and Seifer wondered why Squall was facing the wrong way. Surely Leonhart had come to finish him off?

“C…commander,” one of the boys stammered and Seifer didn’t care which it had been.

Squall glanced over his shoulder, careful not to take his gaze off the students for more than a second. There was an almost mischievous light to those deep grey-blue eyes, the faintest ghost of a smile on Squall’s lips. The expression of light amusement was one that was geared solely towards pissing Seifer off, and making him fight.

Seifer knew that, but it still made him grit his teeth and scowl again.

“When’d you turn into such a wuss, Almasy?” his once rival almost chuckled – if Squall Leonhart ever could chuckle - before turning his attention back to the students. “I suggest you run,” he stated, not lowering his gunblade even a fraction of an inch as he waited for a response. “Or should I inform your headmaster that you were disobeying direct orders?”

The very nerve of Squall Leonhart, daring to speak up for him and calling him a wuss at the same time? “I could have taken them!” Seifer hissed indignantly, taking half a step forward before the head rush of the sudden movement made him sway. The jerk as he halted mid step made a fresh wave of blood flow over his fingers.

He caught the ‘yeah, right’ look that Squall threw over his shoulder and wished desperately for the gunblade junction he’d left back at his bike. He wanted to show Squall that despite whatever he may think, Seifer Almasy was still Seifer Almasy and he wasn’t about to let some jumped up little prick fight his battles for him, even if he was at a slight disadvantage due to a dangerously elevated blood alcohol level.

“Hey, I’m not even armed and I barely got a scratch!”

The students glanced at each other, but it seemed none of them had the heart to stand up now that the odds were a little closer to even and they turned and ran, their footsteps reverberating in the alleyway as they disappeared. Yeah, it was the odds, not the appearance of the Lion of Balamb that had bought them to their senses. Seifer would keep telling himself that until he believed it.

Only when the footsteps had faded into nothing did Squall finally lower his weapon, turning to look at Seifer once more. His eyes rested on the wound, the flow of blood beginning to slow again as Seifer’s fingers clamped down over it.

“Oh please,” Seifer sneered, waving his hand in an attempt to dismiss Squall’s concern – if it could even be termed that, he wasn’t sure why he wasn’t being killed already but he couldn’t help but push his luck – and only managing to drip on the damp concrete of the street below. “I’ve gotten worse shaving. And where the hells did you come from?”

“Does it matter?” Squall shrugged and rested the gunblade on his shoulder. “What were you going to do, let them kill you?”

“Maybe,” Seifer replied, his tone painfully defensive and sullen even to his own ears as just how stupid he’d been began to dawn on him. Which meant he was starting to sober up, and until Squall moved out of the way, he was not going to be able to remedy that. “Hadn’t decided yet. From T-Garden, you know?” he shook his head, as though that would explain everything.

“You just don’t have the balls to do it yourself,” Squall hissed. He was suddenly angry, angry enough for the emotion to reach beyond that frozen mask that he wore day in and day out. His expression tightened and the fading of the light turned Squall’s dark eyes into bottomless blue-black pools. Seifer was sure if he stared into them too long he would drown within them.

Shaking his head again to clear the sensation, Seifer steadied himself on the wall and glared right back. He hated letting Squall get the better of him. Even if he wasn’t quite at his best through the drink, he had to fight back. “When I’m not drunk, I don’t even want to!”

Seifer knew the word was coming before Squall even opened his mouth, the little dismissive flick of his hand, the familiar eye roll, the exasperated sigh. “Whatever,” he muttered.

“You want to try me, hot shot?”

Lionheart was at his throat before he could blink, cutting a blue arc through the air and leaving an after-image on Seifer’s retina. He’d gotten to Squall again, just like a thousand times before. He was the only one who could do that to Leonhart, the only one who had ever been able to get to him and he revelled in it. Even if it did mean a blade that could cut through the toughened plates of half of the Galbadian army's war machines was at his throat and starting to bite.

“You just said you’re not armed. And I’m not going to be a tool for your suicide,” Squall shot back, his hand so tight on the hilt of his blade that his leather gloves creaked a soft protest.

Seifer flashed his best sardonic grin and lifted his hand, showing the concentration of magic forming in his palm. He was always a little surprised that it didn’t hurt, as the flames of a fira spell began to flicker and grow in his hand. The dancing light cast dancing shadows on the walls of the alleyway and bought a little colour to Squall’s cheeks again. “I didn’t say I was defenceless!”

When Squall backed away, lifting his blade to a defensive position, Seifer almost felt good. “Try it, Almasy,” he said, his voice returning to that even, calm tone that meant he was regaining control of his emotions and forcing them deep inside himself again. Becoming the ice princess that Seifer had nicknamed him so many years before.

Seifer eyed Squall critically. Even in his drunken state, he could tell there was something wrong. The kid had always been pale but now he was even worse. He was sure that the Squall he’d fought time and time again had at least a little more meat on his bones. Watching the nervous shift of Squall’s stance, his eyes intent on Seifer’s own and not on the flames flickering in his hand, Seifer half wondered what had happened. “Something tells me lobbing fire spells this close to the bar would only enhance my evil rep,” he said at last, letting the fira dissipate and the magic return to his body.

“So you do have a brain in there. Imagine.”

“This from the little turd who only passed lit because I let him copy offa me,” Seifer rubbed a hand over his face and straightened, unaware he was now streaked with his own blood.

“Once!” The younger man slowly lowered and re-junctioned his blade, the light fizzling out as the blade was hidden again. “Now get out of here before they figure out I have no jurisdiction over them.”

That gave him pause, and Seifer leant closer to Squall as though he could determine the reason just by looking at the smaller man hard enough. When he realised that he couldn’t, he finally gave in and asked “Why not?”

The look that passed over Squall’s face, albeit so briefly that Seifer almost believed that he had imagined it, was one that Seifer had only seen a bare handful of times from the younger man. A mix of rage, anger and indignation that made him ball his hands into fists and shove them deep into his jacket pockets so he could hide how much whatever was going on was affecting him. “I’m not SeeD any more,” he said coldly.

“…Why not?” Seifer repeated, giving in to his own curiosity and stepping a little closer.

“I’m…, forget it. Will you move already?”

The sound of voices approaching interrupted them. Seifer didn’t care, too intoxicated and too concerned about why the hero of the hour was out of SeeD and in a bus station in Galbadia looking like he’d been run over half a dozen times. “Oh, c’mon. They come back with their entire punk class and I can take them.”

“And half the bar when they realise who you are?” Squall asked. He slipped into that old hip shot stance, his hand brushing against the junction sheath that hid his gunblade from casual view.

Blinking at Squall, Seifer sighed. Of course, Squall had to be the voice of logic. Squall had to be reasonable even though almost every fibre of Seifer’s being was screaming ‘Fight! Show him you still have what it takes!’ The little shit had to come along and throw a spanner in the works, just like every time before. “Those losers will take it out on you, for stepping in.”

With a small frown that managed to, somehow, make him look younger than his years despite the hardness in his eyes and the shadows smudged beneath them, Squall nodded. “And I don’t have any magic,” he admitted, hesitantly. As he spoke, he winced so faintly that it was barely there and yet the pain managed to show through the cracks in the old mask.

“Nice, Leonhart. You’ve pissed off the entire bar. I’m unarmed and you tell me you’re out of spells? Not to mention you look like you were scratched up by chicabos and cast out over jagged rocks and I’m… a bit under the weather -”

“Utterly tanked.”

The rumble of voices grew ever louder.

“This isn’t your fight,” Seifer gestured for Squall to make his escape. “You run, I’ll hold them off.”

That got a scathing look. Seifer almost laughed, until Squall said, “You run and I’ll hold them off.”

“Fuck it, we’ll both run.” Seifer grabbed Squall by the arm and half dragged, half led him in the direction of his motorbike, growling in frustration. His lovely buzz and the accompanying numbness was completely gone and now he was stuck with little stubborn ass. “I know you are going to explain what you meant about SeeD, right?” he hissed angrily, his fingers tight enough to bruise through the leather of his jacket.

“Only when you explain why you feel the need to have breath that could strip paint,” Squall hissed, turning his head away with a grimace of disgust. So Seifer had had a little more to drink than he’d first imagined. That didn’t give Squall any right to make pithy comments.

“I wasn’t planning on kissing anyone,” Seifer replied, slowing down as they drew closer to their goal to fumble in his pockets with his free hand, searching for the keys. “Get on the bike.”

The bike in question stood at the edge of the bus station’s meagre car park, illuminated by a pool of sickly yellow light from a lamp overhead. From somewhere under the frame an oil leak dripped slowly, forming a pool of darkness on the cracked and faded tarmac beneath its wheels, matching the dark red trail of blood Seifer was still leaving. It was only when they were close enough to see ghosts of reflections dancing in the dusty paintwork that Seifer released Squall’s arm and pushed him towards the motorcycle.

Squall glanced at the well used machine, any opinion aside from his ever present expression of boredom hidden successfully behind that mask. “Fine,” he spat, laying a hand on the tank, rubbing some of the dust that covered the blood cross symbol away. The deep red stylised cross cut down the middle of the tank, not stopping until it met the black leather seat and red stitching that had seen better days. “I’m driving.”

Squall’s face was set in that determined look. The look he got whenever he drew his blade, the look he got the first time he cast a spell or summoned a GF. The ‘I’m going to do this whether you like it or not’ look. He could be a stubborn little bastard sometimes.

Okay, so maybe Squall was a stubborn little bastard all of the time.

There was no time to argue. Behind them, half of the bar seemed to be pouring around the corner. All they needed was the flaming torches to complete the effect.

“Hyne on a cracker. Okay, fine.”

Seifer practically slammed the keys into Squall’s hand angrily as soon as he found them. Squall turned from him to push his backpack into one of the saddle bags, smirking as he threw one leg over the bike and started it up. The bike burbled into life, settling into a purr and Seifer absently wondered if Squall knew how to ride as he settled behind him.

It was too late to ask as Squall gunned the engine.

It was definitely too late to ask as they peeled out onto the road, leaving a cloud of dust, exhaust fumes and the smell of burning rubber in their wake, as though Diablos himself were right after them.

Seifer had, naturally, chosen that precise moment to lean back and demonstrate the proper one fingered salute. He almost tumbled off the back, and probably would have fallen if Squall hadn’t caught his arm and pulled it around his waist, forcing him close. Adrenalin made him whoop and call back, “So long, Losers!”

When they were finally out of sight of the Trabian students, and their new found friends, Seifer wrapped his other arm around Squall’s waist, resting his head on the younger man’s shoulder. He hung on for dear life, deciding that – if he lived long enough – he would show Squall just how it felt to be a passenger at such insane speeds as his little brother accelerated into the darkness of the night..

If he lived that long.

It was a big if.

 

********

 

They could have been on the road for five minutes. It could have been five hours too, but time didn’t seem to mean anything out in the middle of the desert at night. The sky was an incredibly deep blue-black, scattered with tiny points of light – so many more than they'd ever seen in Balamb and the cities of his travels in the war - that seemed to dance if Seifer stared at them long enough.

Of course, since Squall didn’t seem to know how to drive at any speed less than insane miles an hour, Seifer didn’t have his eyes open long enough for that to happen very often.

The night seemed to stretch on forever, a landscape made of shifting shadows and silky darkness. There was a bitter chill to the air that made Seifer cling to Squall all the more, as though he’d be able to wring some warmth out of that fragile little iceberg.

“Where the hell are we going?” he asked eventually, yelling to be heard over the roar of the engine and the sound of the tyres on the tarmac.

Fortunately, at the question, Squall began to slow down. Though the engine still burbled away happily, he was travelling slowly enough that he didn’t have to shout to be heard. “No idea. Next town?” he suggested, glancing at Seifer.

In the near darkness, Seifer could barely see Squall’s face. However, hanging onto him for dear life and still half afraid he’d fall; Seifer could feel how thin the younger man was. He’d been never been this thin, even as a kid when the little bastard had followed him at the slightest hint of adventure or danger, chubby little hand in his. “May as well,” he said finally. “Sleeping under the stars sucks with no camping gear.”

“Must be getting old, we used to do it all the time,” Squall shrugged, leaning back against Seifer as he shifted gears and began to speed up again. The bike roared into life once more, a throaty growl of power as he applied the throttle slowly and the countryside rushed by at an outrageous speed in the darkness. Seifer was sure the bike was doing it on purpose, behaving better for Squall than it ever had for him. Treacherous little bastard.

If Seifer hadn’t been holding onto Squall, hadn’t been able to feel the way his ribs jutted under his pale skin and lean body, he would have called Squall’s bluff and dared him to sleep out in the bitterly cold desert night air. He would have smirked at him when he’d bristle and rise to the challenge just to match Seifer step for step again. But suspecting that something was wrong, as well as knowing he was not in the best shape to sleep outside himself kept him from offering the little contest of wills. Just this once.

Seifer closed his eyes again, sure he was seeing the occasional rock or cactus red shift from the Doppler effect of their passing. He rested his head against Squall’s. At least without having to watch the shadows slipping by he could ignore some of the dizzying effects that the movement and the alcohol was having on his body. The sooner they stopped, the better. “It still sucked, Leonhart. Except when we were little enough that Matron bought us breakfast.”

“Whatever,” Squall muttered. The theme tune of his life.

They remained silent for a while, Seifer alternating between trying adamantly not to fall asleep or not to throw up. Or both. Just as he was about to fail in one or both, Squall’s voice jolted him from the meagre peace he’d been able to glean from the discomfort and constant roar of the engine.

“There,” the dark haired boy said, pointing out into the distance over the desert sands. Not too far away a smattering of lights shone in a small clutch, a town. “Think you can hold on ‘til we reach that?”

“What makes you think I’ll ever let you go?”

“You’ll have to sober up sooner or later,” Squall replied with the ominous tone of ‘and when you do, I’ll make you suffer’ edging behind it. Seifer had absolutely no doubt that Squall would attempt to make his life a misery just as soon as he woke up.

It was a good thing Seifer didn’t get a hang over after a night of drinking. Sadly he just felt like hell in the morning. “Sez you,” he slurred, squeezing Squall tightly again. Seifer grinned when Squall glanced over his shoulder to roll his eyes.

He’d just known Squall would do that.

With Seifer’s gleeful belly laugh ringing in his ears, Squall forced the bike to move as fast as it could.

********

 

"You can let go now."

"With the way you drive?" Seifer exclaimed. "Hells no."

"Seifer, we've stopped."

Slowly, Seifer opened one eye just to make sure that Squall wasn't lying. He hadn't noticed that the world had suddenly grown quiet with the silencing of the machine beneath them. Squall had switched the engine off, the only sound it made the soft ticking as it began to cool in the night air, so soft it barely registered over the rush of blood in his ears.

Glancing around at a world that seemed to swim in and out of focus as often as Rinoa changed her shoes, Seifer found they'd finally reached their destination. A small motel at the very edge of a town that could barely be termed even that. The neon sign that advertised vacancies buzzed and fizzled in and out of being overhead, giving the old white paint - where it had not peeled off - the faintest red-pink sheen.

The reception office was still open, and someone was around - Seifer saw a shadow move behind the blinds, blocking the light that spilled from between the slats briefly before it was gone again, fast enough to make him wonder if he'd imagined it. "Gonna need a little help here, Squirt," he mumbled, closing his eyes in a futile attempt to gather some strength again before opening them in the vain hope that the small action would be enough to stop the world spinning beneath his feet.

Squall sighed as he clambered off the bike and wrapped an arm around Seifer's waist. "Alright, let's go."

With the rush of adrenaline long gone, and the exhaustion that came with too much to drink was taking over, Seifer couldn’t quite coordinate his movements enough to clamber of the bike. However, with Squall lifting him and coaxing him to slide his leg over the bike though, he managed to find his feet again.

Squall pulled away, the yellow-orange street lamps illuminating his face properly for the first time that evening. Squall looked… sick. His face was thinner than Seifer remembered; shadows smudged under his eyes making him look tired and ill. The weirdest part was his hands - he was shaking, as he reached for his backpack where one strap peered out of the saddle bags.

People who used weapons like gunblades like Squall did weren’t supposed to shake like that. Squall had the steadiest hands, the sturdiest grip. Even if the little dumbass was always scared he'd let go of the damn gunblade. Had he ever even gotten over that little concern?

"You look like shit," Seifer said helpfully, swaying as he struggled to stay on his feet. Squall's hand caught his arm to steady him, his free arm snaking around Seifer's waist to coax him away from the bike and towards the shelter of the hotel.

"Don't make me drop you," Squall threatened halfheartedly, his cool hand catching the bare skin at the edge of Seifer's shirt just briefly enough to make Seifer start. "Besides, you don't look too hot yourself."

As a sudden wave of nausea hit him, Seifer peeled Squall's hand away from his side and pushed him away as gently as he could manage. With a few deep breaths and careful movements he managed to stave off the worst of it for a moment as he fished his wallet out of his pocket and tossed it to the younger man. "I'm going to puke in those bushes," he said, nodding just once at a stretch of half dead shrubs that stretched along one edge of the car park, barely clinging to life in the dry, hard soil. "You get us a room."

Squall disappeared into the shadows between street lights, presumably heading for the office but Seifer was long past caring. By the time he was done with killing the local flora he was ready to keel over into bed and be dead to the world for a good twelve hours at least.

"You okay, Almasy?" Squall's voice drifted from the darkness.

If he hadn't been so busy, Seifer would have smiled at the concern he heard in his voice. Echoes of the quiet little boy with haunted blue-grey eyes that had trailed after him like a puppy, even following him into gunblade training after they'd arrived at garden, threaded through that quiet, deep voice. Little bastard had always been there. Couldn't ever get away from him, even in the war. That was what made it so hard to accept that Squall had beaten him. Let alone that Squall had held back, pulled his punches, and worst of all let him live. "Peachy, grab the saddle bags."

"Room 102, get moving."

Squall hefted the bags, reinforced leather pouches that held more than enough gear for Seifer to live comfortably with for a week provided he was careful, off the back wheel and braced them on his shoulder. He staggered a few steps, waiting to catch his breath before he turned to head for the room, Seifer trailing along behind him. “Remind me to tell you how much of an idiot you are when you have a hang over tomorrow.”

“I never get hangovers,” Seifer lied with a shrug.

“Bastard.”

The word was soft, caught on the cooling desert breeze and almost diverted from his ears completely. Seifer decided to let the insult pass since it was as normal as taking a breath for the two of them to trade off insults without a second thought. Then, with a sigh, Squall opened the door and slipped inside, dumping the bags as Seifer headed straight for the bathroom.

Seifer himself wasn’t sure whether he particularly wanted to switch on the lights for a moment – at least in the darkness he could pretend that the place was clean, and bug free – but finally he succumbed to the desire for light and flicked the switch.

The bathroom was passable. Tiled walls to make it easier for just spraying the whole thing down, and nothing scattered when he turned on the light – that was a good sign. While the tub looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since Hyne’s days, the rest of the bathroom was a million miles from the worst he’d been in over the previous months of travelling. Seifer tried not to look too closely at anything in the room, at least not long enough to notice the worst of things.

By the time he was done soaking his head, cleaning up the blood from his fortunately clotting wound, and drinking enough water to drown Leviathan, Seifer felt a little more human and in control of his faculties. By then, Squall had already changed and had crawled into the double bed.

Squall was, in fact, half curled on his side, facing the door. His hyper-sheath was hooked over the corner of the old brass headboard, paranoia and fear driving Squall to make sure he was protected at all times, even in his sleep. Hyne only knew what the loss of SeeD could have done to his already tentative grip on reality. Behind him, the meagre light on the bedside table struggled to fight back the darkness, leaving long shadows stretching behind the battered chair and table in the corner.

“You hungry?” Seifer asked, motioning to the saddlebags where they sat beside the bed. “I have some travel grub.”

“I’m alright,” the dark haired lump in the covers said softly. His eyes were closed, one hand holding the sheets at shoulder height with a death grip and he looked just like the petrified kid who’d slept in the same bedroom as him too many years ago. Seifer had to stop drinking. Squall probably hated him for the war..., even if he did make a habit of jumping off bus station roofs to save him.

“Yeah. Sure. Fine,” Seifer rolled his eyes, pushing away from the bathroom door and making sure to shut it – just in case – before stripping down and climbing into bed after Squall. “Move over.”

With a dramatic sigh that Seifer himself would have been proud of, Squall shuffled even closer to the edge of the bed. By the time Seifer was settled and taking more than his fair share of space and covers – crowding Squall until he was as close to the edge as possible – Squall was facing him. “Do you still snore?”

“By request only,” Seifer grinned. “Good thing you asked.”

“I’ll just pull this pillow over my head now then.”

Seifer reached up to turn the light out, only to pause. He turned to look at Squall. With his eyes half closed, and his face relaxed on the verge of sleep, Squall looked so very young. His scowls, his frowns, all those attempts at driving people away were as distant as Seifer's cares. "Should I turn it off, or leave it on? Are you still scared of the dark?"

The scowl returned in full force as Squall lifted his head to glare at Seifer. It was no where near its usual intensity of course; Squall was either too amused or too tired to offer anything more than that. By the look of him, Seifer was guessing it would be too tired rather than the other option. "Seifer. That was twelve years ago."

"I'll take that as a no, then," he grinned. Of course it was just a dig at Squall, a way to prove that he was in fact the better man, older, stronger and more awesome than Squall. That he was the older brother. That the war hadn't really mattered no matter what those voices of doubt in the back of his head had to say.

"Turn it out.” Squall growled, adding, “Are you still scared of Geezards?"

With as much dignity as he could muster, his nose in the air and his head held as steadily as he could manage, Seifer replied: "I never was. I just don't like them." He spoke carefully to prevent the worst effects of the drink seeping into his voice. Fortunately, he didn't slur, Hyne only knew what it would take for Squall to forget that particular episode at the bar. Fourteen Gfs and his very own bottle of vodka sprang to mind.

At last he switched off the light and slumped back down in the hopefully clean sheets, returning to take as much of the bed up as he could, adding with a frown, "They shit unexpectedly."

Silence fell again. The curtains were drawn, only a sliver of that oddly coloured orange-yellow light stealing between them from the nearby street light. It felt as though suddenly they were the only ones in world, it was so very quiet and still.

It was too much to last.

"You really wanted to die?" Squall's voice broke the silence hesitantly. Seifer could feel the nervous shift of Squall's body beside him, feel the tense hold on the covers of Squall's hand every time he took a breath and felt the sheets stretch across his chest.

Even after everything that had happened, Seifer still hated to lie to Squall. Bullshit, tease, outright mock occasionally – well he would insist on wearing those damn tight leather pants and dumb fur collar. "I'm a morose drunk," he offered, shrugging to himself. So he was tired, angry at himself and his sorceress, not to mention feeling a bit of self pity at the same time. The alcohol only forced him to magnify all of those feelings and all of that inner turmoil, blowing it out of proportion until he could no longer ignore or control it. It also made him forget. Sometimes.

"Then don't drink, Dumbass," Squall hissed, punching Seifer lightly on the arm. The anger was so thinly hidden in his strained words that Seifer could feel it, feel Squall's frustration just as keenly as his own.

"Yeah, I guess I could try that," the older man offered, lifting a hand to ruffle Squall's hair lightly. "You gonna tell me what's the deal with you?"

Squall tensed, ducking his head away from Seifer's hand to drag his hand through his dark chocolate hair that had turned to ebony in the lack of light. He was just a shadow moving on a background of blackness, and Seifer could barely discern his movements as he settled down and sighed. "You heard about president Loire and me?"

Seifer wondered if there was anyone left in the world who hadn't heard. He'd seen the papers from Esthar - now that the country's boarders were open and information was once again being exchanged freely between the major cities of the world, newspapers had started showing up in the larger towns along the rail line. The Loire and Leonhart connection had managed to seep into every page of news, even making some of the Galbadian newspapers despite the resentment that lingered in some places toward both Esthar and Garden. He'd seen the blurred pictures, the carefully worded press releases and had wondered just what the Estharian president had been able to offer Squall to sway him into moving to Esthar. "Yeah, go you, Squirt. You have a past!"

With a scoff, Squall folded his arms over his chest. Seifer didn't need any light to tell him that Squall was pouting, still angry and resentful but now those emotions were directed at the long absent father. Much easier to deal with when he was tired than full on pissy little bitch mode aimed at him. "I always had a past. He removed me from Garden and forced me to stay in Esthar with him.”

All manner of shocking and downright disgusting mental images ran through Seifer’s mind. He could torture Squall at the whim of a sorceress, he could scar him and bully him but the dark haired little iceberg in leather was still his baby brother. Squall was still someone who – deep inside where the feelings could be buried if he had the time or energy to make the effort – he needed to protect. “…Like weird and kinky? Should I kill him?” Not an idle offer from someone trained like they were.

“What?” Squall exclaimed. In the darkness, Seifer could practically hear the gears in Squall’s head turning as he thought the question over. When the light dawned, it was almost enough to make the room bright again. “Seifer, he’s my father. No kinky. Killing’s a maybe.”

“Him being your father is what would make it weird and kinky, Squall.”

“I’m too tired for this conversation.” Squall reached over Seifer to switch the light back on, frowning down at him while he was still stretched over his body to reach it. “He has never implied he wants anything more than to ruin my life by being a father.”

With the light so close, the shadows under Squall’s eyes seemed too dark to be real. His eyes almost seemed fevered. Seifer made a half assed attempt at being soothing. “How bad can it be? I mean at least the food must be good, right?” Or maybe not, as skinny as the kid had gotten. Seifer hadn’t lost that much weight and he had days at a time where he wasn’t sure where his next meal would come from.

“It’s like he’s rubbing everything I missed over the last seventeen years in my face,” Squall sighed. His hand, where it rested on the table beside the bed, was clenched into a fist. It was rare to see such showings of emotion from the soft features and the slim frame, particularly in a situation as intimate as the one they’d found themselves in that night. Perhaps this was bigger than Seifer had suspected.

However, Seifer couldn’t pretend to understand what he was going through. Squall had always been so quiet, so withdrawn. He’d recoiled from anyone who’d tried to connect with him, hidden away whenever he could to pretend that he didn’t need anyone when out of all of the children he’d grown up with he was probably the most needy, the most impressionable. Yet Squall had been the one to follow him. The shadow to his light, the squire to the romantic knight. Good damn thing Squall hadn't followed him into the service of his sorceress, or they would have taken the entire world together. No one else would have stood a chance. “Like… giving you shit? A red wagon and a bicycle and stuff?”

“Perfect room, perfect food, perfect life for a stuck up prince. How’d we get swapped at birth if you’re older than me?”

“What, you think I’m the perfect prince? Hyne, you’re drunker than I am.”

“No, but you could act it better than I could,” Squall rolled his eyes.

Tucking his arms beneath his head, Seifer stared at the ceiling painted in that sickly shade of bought-in-bulk magnolia that all the quiet little out of the way motels seemed to adorn all flat surfaces with. One of these days he was going to find a motel where even the furniture was painted magnolia, he was sure of it. There was a large water stain on the ceiling that he examined thoughtfully, just so he wouldn’t have to look at Squall again just yet, to give him a moment to get it together. At least, he hoped it was a water stain. “Well duh. First, he’s not my dad so I could always just kick his ass. Second, since I have shit now, three squares and a photo op sounds pretty good.”

“I’d rather have shit than live as something I’m not,” Squall muttered softly. Lifting his hand again he returned the room to darkness, perhaps rather than have to look at Seifer and see his feelings about that. That way he could pretend Seifer's reaction had been whatever he'd been looking for, and not whatever Seifer was more than likely to say to throw a spanner in the works.

“So you ran away.”

“Decommissioned, debriefed, stripped of all magic and GF’s then dragged to Esthar by an armed guard.” Squall chuckled softly. The bitter sound was utterly alien in the darkness, an unreal noise that he didn’t expect from Squall - after all, Squall wasn’t supposed to have any sense of humour. Seifer certainly hadn’t seen much of it over the years, and he would have been the one to see it. “Wouldn’t you look on that as a challenge?”

“Fuck yeah.” That would feel like as much of a challenge as a slap with a glove, Seifer admitted. He’d hate to feel trapped just as much as Squall had, even if it was a world apart from what he had. “Wait… you mentioned that before, no magic? What about Shiva?”

“Xu took everything, Almasy. Even Shiva. She tried to take my blade as well.”

“That bitch,” Seifer spat. Squall without Shiva was almost unimaginable. They were as closely intertwined as Fujin and Pandemona, seemingly impossible to separate. To lose the guardian force that he’d identified with so completely, who Squall had treated with the respect and admiration he so very rarely gave to anyone else was beyond sick. It was downright cruel. It was Xu all over. “Hyne. You should sue or something, Shiva was yours, Quez too... Everyone knew that.”

“Quezacoatl is Zell’s now, and all guardian forces belong to garden,” Squall murmured. The cool tone of his voice did nothing to hide how much it had hurt him, and Seifer wasn’t sure how or whether he should even attempt to comfort him.

“Says who? Xu?” Seifer scoffed, rolling his eyes. “You are all fucked up or you would’ve fought her. It’s your Garden; hells your dad bankrolls it doesn’t he? Now that Norg is spooge?”

Quiet for a moment, Squall eventually shrugged, tugging what was left of the covers around himself just that little bit tighter. “I was removed before any deals were finalised and I tried to fight. They had three SeeD hold me down while they removed everything.”

Squall’s sudden shiver of revulsion was enough to make Seifer wonder how it had felt. Was it the pain or the humiliation of being treated like that by people who had once been his classmates or subordinates or both? Seifer knew the clawing invasive feel of someone drawing magic from your body that you were not willing to give – Squall and his team had drawn magic from him in the war, after all, but that was past now. And that was in battle when the adrenaline was pumping and there was no time to think. “I wish I’d been there, Squirt. Of course, if I were there, Xu would have been trying to kill me but…”

“Whatever… and thanks.”

Seifer reached out to Squall hesitantly. Squall was still the closest thing he had to family, brother and bother, and after the motorcycle ride and the way he'd felt, Seifer couldn't help the urge to comfort him. As though somehow that meagre comfort could make up for the indiscretions of the war. Gathering his courage, Seifer pulled Squall to him.

They'd spent a thousand nights or more like this. Back when Squall would crawl into his bed for company and comfort when the bad dreams had been too much for him. With the battered old stuffed lion that had constantly accompanied him during the hours of darkness at the orphanage trailing after him, Squall always tugged on Seifer's sleeve to gain permission to slide into bed with him. Of course he'd never turned the boy away, he was the big brother, and he would always be there for him.

Except when it was truly important, it seemed.

For a moment, Squall froze when he was pressed against Seifer's side. His heart thundered with fear and apprehension, Seifer could feel it against his skin, but again, it was just for a moment and slowly he began to relax once more. Squall was wise to be cautious, Seifer told himself, after all only six months ago that Seifer had been his sworn enemy, torturing him in D-District prison.

Still, that moment of fear hurt.

It had been so long since Seifer had held anyone, let alone Squall, that he was sure he wouldn't have let go even if Squall had fought him to pull away. "Bed's too small," he explained at last, long after Squall had settled his head on Seifer's shoulder and rested a hand on his chest.

"Either that, or you're too drunk."

Scoffing, Seifer waved the comment away in the darkness. "Never too drunk," he said, rolling his eyes. On Seifer's bare chest, Squall's hand flexed stretching. At least in the silence the years of training and battle had seemed to melt away and leave the fragile children they'd once been exposed and open to one another again. The relief that the years could be washed away so easily was incredible to both of them, Seifer was sure. Squall was too quiet, too still to not be thinking, and Seifer could only hope it was good things.

The hand on Seifer's chest curled into a fist slowly, and Squall yawned again. Every time he spoke he sounded more and more tired, more and more in need of a sleep spell or something to push him over the edge. "Been a while since we did this," he whispered. The knowledge that Squall could remember doing this even though he'd been so very young and even though he'd been junctioned for so many years was a relief – at least Squall wouldn't think it was too weird.

"Too long," Seifer mused. He had to apologise - there was no way of knowing if Squall would still be there in the morning light, or whether they would never have a moment like this again where Seifer could gather his courage and wits and find a way to make Squall know he was sorry. "Squall, about... Ulti and all that...."

"Was it your choice?" the younger man asked as soon as Seifer's voice trailed off. Still straight to the point, at least Seifer could get it out of the way and now he'd had his moment to hold someone he could admit it and let Squall run off if he needed to.

Seifer hoped he wouldn't need to.

"Yeah, at first. You know, in for a penny, in for a pound. Whatever the fuck that means."

Squall's fisted hand tightened even further. He started to speak several times before stopping again, trying to find just the right words for what he wanted to say. At a loss, he finally asked in a very soft, small voice "Even the torture?"

"I'm not going to be a puss and say it’s not my fault, Squall. She could take control to a point, after I let her that first time, but I gave her that control like a dumb shit so... I ...compromised a lot. D-District, I got the non-SeeDs out of there – Rin and Kinneas- and I thought you had Quez, that she'd protect you," he offered. Seifer hoped that the explanation didn't sound as hollow to Squall as it felt, the empty words bitter on his tongue despite being true. If he could take back one moment of the war, it would be that moment when he'd seen Squall tied to the wall of the D-District prison, electricity arcing through his body, the abhorrent smell of burning human flesh filling his senses.

Squall shrugged. At least he wasn't reaching for his pants, or the hyper sheath hooked over the corner of the bed. That was as good a sign as any. "You can make it up to me at least."

"I can do that. How?" he asked, tugging the sheets around Squall's shoulders, making sure the blankets were tucked around him. Damn bony shoulders and elbows, Squall seemed to be all corners and sharp angles now that were determined to dig into his side. Still it just made him want to keep the boy warm all the more. So much for any puppy fat that Seifer had noticed in those last few days before their exam. Now he was all corded muscle on an oddly skinny little frame.

"Give up the death wish. And breakfast in bed in the morning."

"I dunno if I can give up breakfast in bed, Squirt," Seifer mused, rubbing his chin with his free hand.

Squall’s fist turned to drum sharply enough on Seifer’s chest to make him wince. Obviously Squall still had no concept of humour despite his brief flirtations with it and Seifer’s –albeit meagre – attempt at a joke had not been appreciated. He should have been used to that by now. “I meant for me, idiot.”

Sighing in resignation, Seifer patted Squall’s thin shoulder and nodded his accession. “Okay, but you have to eat it.”

“I will.”

“And in the morning, we’ll hang out and plot how to fuck Xu up,” Seifer grinned into the darkness. He had the incredible urge to add the appropriately villainous laughter but it was too late, he was too drunk and Squall definitely wouldn’t appreciate it in the sleepy, apparently grumpy mood he was in. So he held off, at least this time. He’d be sure to run into Squall again, their paths seemed inexplicably intertwined and he was sure that they’d never be apart for long.

How else would they fight?

“Don’t mention Xu and fucking in the same sentence,” Squall grumbled. His voice was getting fainter now, closer to sleep as his breathing began to slow into an even rhythm. All traces of that tension had melted away and with the warmth of the blankets and Seifer’s body, Squall had no reason to stay awake.

“Good point,” Seifer nodded. Squall’s soft voice murmured something about nightmares as a truck chose that moment to pass the motel, headlights glaring through the crack in the curtains briefly to light the room as bright as day. The water stain on the ceiling seemed even darker, and it might have been Seifer’s imagination but it also seemed to be growing. He hoped it was just his imagination. “I’ll protect you from nightmares, Squirt. You still like eggs right?”

Squall didn’t answer. He nodded slowly as the light faded again, the truck driving onwards into the eternal night.

“We’re good then, go to sleep.”

For the first time since they’d first arrived at Balamb garden, Squall did as Seifer bade him.


	3. Chapter Two

**Chapter Two.**

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”  
C. S. Lewis

**March 18th.**

 

Trying to shield himself from the eyeball piercing thread of light that determinedly made its way through the infinitesimally small gap between the dingy grey-brown curtains, Seifer scowled to himself. With his free arm lifted to block the light and source of pain, he took a moment to gather his wits and tried to will his head to move.

It came to him very slowly that to have a free arm, he had to therefore have a pinned arm. Now that the light was no longer stabbing him in the corneas, Seifer turned his head a little and realised there was a Leonhart sleeping on his other arm.

This in itself was not an every day occurrence, naturally. It had been once, when they’d been so small they’d had to share one of the tiny orphanage beds that always seemed to have a spring determined to poke unsuspecting children in the arm or back or leg. Not to mention back when Squall had been young enough to admit to the nightmares that had plagued him night after night, despite his age, and crawl into the bed with Seifer in an effort to ward them off. Those days, however, were long passed and like most good times, they weren’t coming back.

Squall was dead to the world for the moment, curled quite happily against Seifer’s side as he slumbered on serenely. The nightmares must have faded like most of his childhood memories long since – or somehow in the years of being caught up in the farce of garden had pushed the awful dreams aside and left Squall some manner of peace in their stead.

However, none of this was explaining why Squall was in bed with him, leaning on his shoulder. There had to be a reason somewhere…

Damned if Seifer could think of one, though.

He didn’t have long to wait for to satisfy his curiosity. After only a matter of minutes, Squall made a soft noise of waking, rubbing a hand over his face.

“Before we pull our weapons and all that…,” Seifer started. To his surprise, Leonhart did not tense at the sound of his voice, thereby confirming his suspicions that this was somehow some cosmic joke and in fact, not a drunken hallucination. Nor even an after drunken hallucination. “Do you have any idea where we are?”

Squall nodded, stretching as he tried to find the energy to sit up and crawl out of bed. “Room 102 of the Westguard hotel. Somewhere in the Galbadian desert.”

For a moment, Seifer considered what would lend itself to be the best response to this revelation. Not only that but the fact that Squall was awake, and still leaning against him caused him some concern in and of itself alone – Squall was not supposed to be leaning against him, not supposed to be pressed up to his side in a cheap motel bed. It didn’t make sense, but Seifer’s head was pounding too much for him to really care.

“If you say we eloped, I am taking this place apart looking for the camera,” Seifer grumbled at last. He closed his eyes again, squeezing them tight shut in the hope that he would somehow be able to ward away the worst of the pain, however impossible he knew it to be.

“You were drunk and being a wuss,” Squall explained helpfully.

Even though the voice was soft, it was loud enough for every word to jab right into Seifer’s alcohol addled brain and make him want to hide his head under the pillow from the words. He didn’t particularly care what they were, as long as they stopped. At least at first he didn’t care what they were. As Seifer began to comprehend them despite the pain they invoked, he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. The outright lies – they had to be lies.

“I saved your ass from three Trabians and bought you here,” Squall finished, pulling himself away from Seifer’s loosening grip and sitting up. His hair was even more dishevelled than it usually was when he decided he was fit for human company, but a few quick strokes of his fingers smoothed it back into its normal style.

Seifer was beginning to wonder if Squall had ever seen a comb.

“Highly unlikely,” he sniffed haughtily. He would have said ‘impossible’ but considering the morning thus far, Seifer was willing to allow more leeway in probabilities.

There was also the fact that being so close to Squall after all that had happened, after all that had passed between them was quite disconcerting. Squall was supposed to be his enemy and rival, Squall was not supposed save him from anything and he certainly shouldn’t wind up sleeping with him – even if it was in the completely innocent manner that Seifer was hoping it had been.

Stretching again, just for a moment, Squall made a soft sound of satisfaction. His eyes closed as he held it, his head tipped up and the tiny but evil shaft of light that had found its way into the room for the express purpose of torturing Seifer lit up Squall’s familiar profile. He looked sleepy, content, and sweet as a child, which was disproved as soon as he turned to poke the wound on Seifer’s arm - none too gently- in an attempt to prove his point. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Little fuck,” Seifer cursed, curling around his arm defensively, glowering up at Squall.

“Not unless you got adventurous after I went to sleep,” Squall returned absently. He crawled to the edge of the bed, rubbing his shoulder thoughtfully as he eyed the bags on the floor. Squall seemed typically lost in thought; at least it gave Seifer time to gather his wits and try to regroup. Since when had Squall functioned so damn well without caffeine?

The faintest thought wiggled through Seifer’s hangover, the memory of spending the previous night wondering how Squall had become so thin in such a comparatively short time. He was not the feral, lean creature that he’d been at the end of the war and even less so the strong little warrior who had fought with him that morning before it had all begun, just growing out of the last of his baby fat.

Squall was indeed thinner than he’d remembered. Of course he’d always been a pretty guy, and the time he’d been away from garden had only served to intensify that - his hair was longer, he looked somehow softer than he’d been when he’d been the leather bound little thorn in Seifer’s side. He almost looked… girlish.

However, when Seifer allowed his eyes to travel below Squall’s throat, to the scarred skin of his torso, he was reminded that Squall was still dangerous, even if his ribs were more prominent than was probably right – his chest still bore the scar from their matron’s icicle, though the mark was a lot smaller than he had ever expected it to be after seeing that wound. He’d lifted Squall’s body, seen the blood streaming from the black leathers he’d been wearing…

“Not into little kids, Leonhart,” he growled, eyeing the few faint scars on Squall’s body beside the one on his forehead that Seifer himself had inflicted. There were fewer than he’d expected, and he was half sure that Squall had avoided healing the wounds in time to prevent the scar tissue on purpose, to make him look more manly. He certainly needed the help looking as he did.

Squall always seemed to know just how to piss him off. It was why Seifer was so determined to make pissing Squall off in kind part of his day.

“How’s your head?” Squall smirked at him as he picked up his jacket. It was different to the one he’d worn at garden, still leather but no fur collar – he looked odd without if after all these years. The leather itself was battered and worn along the cuffs and elbows – it couldn’t have been his own, it was a size too big and it just didn’t look right. It didn’t look Squall somehow. “Should I open the curtains?”

“Only if you want me to bleed to death through my eyes.”

“That’s a yes, then?”

“Fucker,” Seifer cursed, throwing a hand over his eyes in an effort to protect himself from the glare of the light. However, Squall didn’t open the curtain; there was no hiss of brass rings on the aged pole. “Do whatever you want, I’m taking a shower.”

Saying he would take a shower and actually finding the strength and urge to do so were two different things. His legs refused to listen to his commands to move, his back was determined to remain set in the position it had been all night and Seifer was sure if he mentioned that to Squall he’d be laughed out of the bedroom.

Seifer Almasy was not a morning person, even without a hangover. He especially did not like waking up with a smug brunet when he had a terminal headache, though he was sure Squall would annoy him even if he had been sober the night before.

Something dropped at Seifer’s side with a rattle, whatever it was bouncing on the ratty covers of the bed and rolling to bump against him gently. Cautiously, he opened one jade green eye to peer through his fingers at Squall before looking down at the item that had landed.

It was simply a small bottle of painkillers but it was enough to make Seifer debate kissing Squall with relief. Of course, he didn’t doubt for a moment that Squall would take that the wrong way. “Okay. You’re adopted.”

“Sorry, I already have one dead beat father,” Squall shrugged the comment away; he was scowling again, his free hand curled into a fist on his hip as he dug through his bag for something.

“You do?” Seifer asked absently. After a moment, the faintest flicker of recollection slid through his brain. The words Squall had spoken the previous night, about Esthar, about his father, though they’d only been brief and the awareness of them was fuzzy at best, Seifer still remembered the anger and bitterness in Squall’s voice when he’d spoken of the country he was on the run from, as well as the man who led it. Not to mention newspaper articles, but they were hazy and distant before coffee. “Wait, you found your dad… And he was some officious prick. You ran away, right?”

Squall made a soft, irritated sound as he returned his attention to Seifer. He looked reluctant to speak for a moment, his hand fisting in the collar of his leather jacket until the already worn surface threatened to crack or tear at his touch. “Laguna Loire.”

Having nothing to say to that, Seifer twisted the cap off the bottle of painkillers and tapped a few out onto his palm. He took them with no preamble, grimacing at the bitter taste. His stomach didn’t appreciate the sudden influx of medicine and rolled threateningly.

“Are you trying to kill yourself again?” Squall asked huffily, straightening to head for the bathroom. A sigh of frustration floated back and if his target had been within reach, Seifer would have smacked Squall just for that. Just to remind him of his place.

“I never tried to kill myself! I’m very fond of me,” Seifer scowled. Swallowing as though he could somehow dismiss the disgusting flavor from his mouth, Seifer shuddered. It wasn’t the most pleasant of tastes all by itself but with the post drink coating on his tongue, it was somehow even worse. “Gah, need water.”

Squall disappeared into the bathroom, calling back over his shoulder “Stay there, for Hyne’s sake.”

Deigning to do so, just because moving was not one of his best options at that particular moment, Seifer glowered at the ceiling. He had a vague memory of eyeing the water stain he found there the previous night; though he wasn’t particularly sure he wanted to examine it too closely because, in faint eyeball killing morning light, it didn’t look like a water stain.

Returning with a glass of water, Squall crossed to the bed and folded the glass in Seifer’s hand, wrapping his fingers around the cool vessel. The water seemed clear enough, as Seifer eyed it, and he had no choice but to take the offer - so he drank deeply.

Fortunately after a few weeks of Raijin’s cooking he was sure his stomach could take just about anything.  
The water was a million miles away from what he really needed – a cup of coffee – but it was cool, wet and managed to take away some of the lingering tang of the medicine. Enough to make Seifer feel a little more human, and a little more aware of his surroundings at least.

“Squall,” he began, eyeing the younger man cautiously. Squall was thinner, Seifer could see it in his face, see the shadows under his eyes and it just wasn’t right. “You look like something the cat dragged in.”

“Thanks, it’s nice to see you alive too.”

“Yeah, okay, but the hero is supposed to live happily…” Seifer’s train of thought was interrupted as Squall folded a small cloth and laid it on Seifer’s forehead. He’d soaked it when he was in the bathroom, and the cool touch did help soothe his aching head just a little. “Thanks – happily ever after.”

Squall scoffed softly, rolling his eyes. He straightened, leaning against the wall beside the bed and folded his arms over his chest. Defensive and petulant, he looked like the seventeen year old he was for perhaps the first time in his life. “I wish someone had told Loire that before he’d had me frogmarched out of Balamb and onto a transport to Esthar.”

“Hyne on a cracker, they edited that out of the news.”

“Not good PR material I suppose,” Squall mused.

“On the other hand, only you would rather stay at Garden than be the Prince,” Seifer tucked one arm beneath his head and edged the cloth down over his eyes. The aspirin was beginning, albeit slowly, to work. After Squall had so graciously made him aware of the wound in his arm, he’d realised just how much it ached. The dull throb was sickeningly constant, but he wouldn’t give Leonhart the satisfaction of seeing him wince any more than absolutely necessary.

Seifer hated mornings.

The bed dipped as Squall sat beside him, his cool fingers gently touching Seifer’s wounded arm. Even though he was gentle, Seifer found himself bracing for the possibility of torture, of Squall using the obvious injury to further harm him.

“I like being in control of my own life, that’s all,” the soft voice was faintly distant, and Seifer found himself lifting one corner of the cloth to peek at Squall. His lips were set in a thoughtful frown as he turned and teased the open wound carefully. “I’m going to clean this up, alright?”

“Sure, thanks,” Seifer nodded. “And I guess I know where you are coming from, the control thing, I mean.”  
Oh Hyne how he knew. He felt that like an icicle to the chest, and it made him feel a little more kindly towards the kid. Nothing could really make up for the previous months of fighting and bullying, let alone the number of times they’d tried to kill each other during the days of the war, but that single statement had made him feel closer to Squall again, like when they were kids. “So what did he do? Kidnap you? I guess he did, what an idiot.”

Squall moved off the bed, digging through one of the saddlebags. “Pretty much,” he shrugged as he pulled a backpack out of one and set it on the end of the bed.

“Hyne on a cracker. He should have just sent you a letter. ‘Dear Leonhart, bet you can’t break into Esthar a second time. By the way, we have a huge leather goods store, and if your girlfriend gets on your nerves you can seal her up and send her to the moon, no extra charge’.”

Squall drew a small medikit from the bag, then set on the bed and sat beside it to pop it open. A couple of bottles followed it, a potion, antiseptic… Seifer frowned. He should have just cast a cure but it was a waste, and he wasn’t sure how many he had left stocked without checking. His head was still pounding too hard for him to concentrate long enough to find out.

“Ex. On the girlfriend thing, I mean.”

“It’s always over when you mail them to the moon,” Seifer shrugged and instantly regretted it as his arm welled with fresh blood. Apparently Squall’s examination had been a little less gingerly carried out than Seifer had thought. The wound hurt more when he actually stared at it. “Anyway, I don’t get the high handed treatment. I mean, you guys were on the same side in the war.”

Squall disappeared into the bathroom, returning with another cloth. “I don’t get it either,” he admitted as he poured something from one of the bottles – Seifer couldn’t see which – onto the wet cloth he held before sitting beside him again.

The look of concentration on Squall’s face as he turned Seifer’s arm and cleaned up the worst of the dried blood from the cut was almost comical. In fact it was all Seifer could do to keep from laughing.

Until, that is, the antiseptic the dark haired pretty boy of pure evil had poured so generously onto the rag he held seeped into the open cut and Seifer very nearly jumped out of his skin at the sudden pain. “Ow, fuck! What is that, acid?”

Hauling the offending arm back to him and trapping it under his own arm so Seifer could not escape again, Squall glowered at him. His eyes were dark, gathering storm clouds as he permitted just a little of his anger to show. It was nothing, Seifer had seen his eyes so dark they looked black, seen them so pale they seemed like frozen pools of silver. “Keep still, Almasy.”

Rolling his eyes, Seifer submitted to Squall’s whims to act like a field medic. It was probably his attempt at a peace offering, that was the only way Seifer could rationalise the predominantly tender touches. “I can guess why, actually. Xu has the whole ball of wax now, doesn’t she?”

“She’s headmistress,” Squall nodded, still concentrating. “Has Shiva and all my magic.”

“And still couldn’t get laid in a Galbadian Barracks.”

“Whatever,” Squall murmured, barely paying attention.

“I’m sorry, Leonhart. I…,” sighing, Seifer shrugged his good arm and eased closer to Squall carefully, so his arm wouldn’t be held at quite such an awkward angle. “I should have warned you about her.”

“Xu?” Squall looked up. Apparently he was paying more attention than Seifer had given him credit for. The quiet boy was frowning faintly, his ‘I’m muddling through things’ expression that usually he couldn’t resist teasing and coaxing Squall out of. “Laguna would have forced me back to Esthar no matter what happened.”

“Maybe, but he wouldn’t know about your GF’s,” the older man turned his head to watch Squall still cleaning the wound. The jagged edge of the weapon had dragged fibres into the flesh and Squall was working on removing them. Seifer watched the deceptively small fingers working with only a distant awareness that it was his own arm. He remembered those slender fingers when they were still the short, stubby fingers of a child he’d led over the beach, when Squall had still looked up to him and accepted, eventually, that maybe his Sister wasn’t the be all and end all of people who cared for him. “So you made it this far with no magic? I’m impressed. And I see they couldn’t keep the ‘blade.”

“I told them they could pry it from my hands and her corpse.”

Seifer felt suddenly proud of Squall. He’d been the first one to pick up a blade, the first one to decide that the incredibly difficult weapon was the one for him, and Squall had followed in his footsteps the whole time. Always just half a step behind him, like the little brother he’d never asked for. “That’s my boy.”

He resisted the urge to ruffle Squall’s hair in congratulations but only just – if Squall hadn’t been so close to a source of pain for Seifer he would have enjoyed rubbing in that Squall was still the younger brother, the one doomed to follow. So long as Squall didn’t follow him into the control of sorceresses, Seifer would be reasonably happy.

“Besides,” Squall glanced at the hyper sheath where it hung, as though checking if it was still there to reassure himself. “I’ve upgraded so much there’s barely anything left of the revolver.”

“Really? Why? You lost your range then,” Seifer grumbled. He’d helped Squall configure his blade the first night he’d got it, when Squall had been afraid of screwing up the blade. Somehow, any changes made without his knowledge or aid seemed like a betrayal worse than finding themselves on opposing sides in the war.

Squall almost smiled. “Lionheart is a more reliable blade.”

His headache long forgotten, Seifer huffed indignantly. “More reliable than what?” he growled, angry at the perceived and implied insult – whether it was meant in jest or not. Squall knew better than to insult his rival’s blade. That was possibly the only thing Seifer would not stand for. “Nothing wrong with Hyperion’s blade configuration!”

The younger man glowered right back at Seifer. “Are you really that desperate for more antiseptic?”

“You suck as a torturer.”

“I’m the hero, remember?” Squall said, wiping Seifer’s arm particularly violently. His slender lips were turned down in the deepest scowl he’d worn all day – Seifer had managed to bug him enough to crack the mask and force him to reveal his anger and he’d hardly even tried, something was wrong. “Though you filled out that role very well.”

Seifer flinched.

It was a low blow, and they both knew it. Squall hesitated for only a moment before he mumbled “sorry”, his voice taking on a sullen tone.

“Me too.”

Looking up at Seifer through his bangs as he reached for a dressing from the bag, Squall frowned thoughtfully. Seifer could almost see the cogs turning in Squall’s head again. “For D-district?”

“For a lot of things, but yeah, for that, you think I’m proud of that or something?” he snapped, pulling away and scrambling to the edge of the bed. Seifer jumped to his feet; his heart was pounding against his ribs suddenly, and he found himself looking around for Hyperion’s hyper sheath.

Squall remained seated, having finally found the bandage he was looking for. He squeezed the white gauze in his fist, his knuckles turning almost as pale as the item he held, waiting for yet another battle. “What?!”

“What do you want? To fight me? Kill me?” Seifer asked, backing up a few steps. He turned and began pacing back and forth across the room, his feet making soft sounds on the stained carpet – Squall had to want something but he’d proved that Seifer’s death was not it the previous night after all. “No, you helped me last night. What is it then? Closure? Explanations? Apologies?”

As he paced, Seifer saw Squall’s eyes flicker from himself to the Lionheart’s hyper sheath, hooked on the headboard. However, he didn’t move, his body just tensing in readiness in case he needed to. “All I want is to avoid getting picked up by Esthar until I turn eighteen. I just happened to see you being an idiot last night and I didn’t want to see you getting killed by a few piss poor students.”

Seifer stopped and turned to stare at Squall. He wasn’t sure whether Squall was telling the truth at first, but his little brother had never really been able to lie to him – maybe that was why Ultimecia had forced him to torture the guy in the prison. She’d seen that in his mind and used it against the kid. Squall had lied for him, but he just couldn’t lie to him and be believed.

And it would have been a terrible death: stuck in an alley with a few amateurs; it just wasn’t him. “Yeah,” Seifer grinned suddenly, the irony and humour of it all hitting him. “That would have been embarrassing. Like dying on the can taking a shit.”

Squall looked relieved, the preparatory tension leaving his body in a rush. “I’ll make sure you have a decent death.”

“Yeah, at least lie to make it sound good.”

Squall stood – he might have even been a little taller than Seifer remembered. Though the tension had departed, the movements he made were still slow and precise, caution threading through every step and gentle gesture. “Saving orphans from a fire, or kittens from a flood?” he asked, choosing a dressing from the kit and tearing it from its sterile packaging. He didn’t look at his hands as he unwrapped it, nor did he take his eyes off Seifer for a moment.

Squall was right not to trust him, but it still hurt.

“Oh I was thinking in a pile of gil, surrounded by beautiful hookers. But the saintly angle works – how about a flood of kittens from flaming orphans?”

“Anything for you,” Squall said with mock reassurance. He paused suddenly, the frown catching his lips. Squall would thank him for that scar between his eyes some day, Seifer had long since decided, because if it hadn’t been for that he would still look like a girl. Those pouting lips and long lashes made him seem anything but manly. “Is this a truce?”

“Why not?” Seifer shrugged. He couldn’t see a reason against it: the problems that had occurred between them were all Ultimecia’s fault and nothing personal really, when all was said and done. Those events were long since passed and he had no reason to keep hating Squall, if indeed Seifer had ever actually hated him of his own accord. It was still difficult to remember which parts had been the sorceress and which parts had been himself. “Neither of us have much left to fight over – or with, for all that.”

A faint smile caught on Squall’s lips. It was strange to see the curl of amusement on those pale lips after so many years of it being missing. Perhaps the little fan party Squall had been travelling with had been good for him after all. “Fine. Sit down so I can tie that off before I go.”

The sudden announcement left Seifer a little taken aback; so much so in fact that he sat down without any argument. “Go where?”

“Wherever, I don’t have an aim yet.”

“Plans are overrated, but I have one. Breakfast.” Seifer nodded. He watched as Squall wound the bandage around his arm carefully and tied it off. He winced faintly as Squall pulled it tight, though he couldn’t really complain – he’d certainly had worse and given worse to Squall.

Squall arched the dark smudge of his eyebrow as he stepped back to examine his work. Seifer felt those storm cloud eyes on him more keenly than anything – like ice on his bare arm. “Can your stomach take it yet?” he asked.

That was a very good question. In his current condition Seifer seriously doubted it – his stomach rolled restlessly and his mouth felt as though a battalion of SeeDs had marched over his tongue, stabbed him in the throat a few times then marched right back out. However, he was planning on sneaking an Esuana in the bathroom to rid himself of the worst of the alcohol’s effects. “I’ll let you know after some coffee. Get dressed – why thrill the villagers? And I’ll shave my tongue.”

Seifer ducked into the bathroom while Squall dressed. He let the taps run in the basin, the first spurt from both running dark with rust or mud or something that Seifer really didn’t want to think about too much. He rinsed his mouth when it finally ran clear in the hope of clearing the taste of the doormat he’d obviously licked at sometime during the previous evening’s proceedings and cast the spell on himself.

The magic glittered and reflected in the mirror. In only a matter of seconds he felt twice as human as before. Although that really wasn't saying all that much.

After washing up and slicking his hair back with water, he was almost back to his normal self. Only the headache remained and the painkillers were working on that.

Swaggering back out of the bathroom, he pulled some cleaner clothes from his saddlebag to tug on – of course he could make absolutely anything look like a million gil even if he was feeling like death warmed over – and eyed Squall again critically. At least he seemed a little more with it in the light of morning and a fading hangover.

“What happened to Fujin and Rajin?” Squall asked, stuffing his things back into his backpack with as much care and attention as he had afforded Seifer’s arm. He was careful not to break the bottles, particularly the potion – potions were still expensive for someone out on the road, thousands of miles from home. Especially if you were on the run.

The fact that Squall had managed to fit his life into one backpack and a gunblade junction was incredibly sad to Seifer. The guy was a hero, the kind of man who would be worshipped wherever he went and here he was – travelling between backwater towns and living in motel room after motel room with so very little to call his own. His father must have been shitting bricks when he’d disappeared. Seifer shook his head to dismiss the smug smirk that caught on his lips at the thought that no one could keep his little brother, his lion down or trapped for very long. Even Seifer himself had been unable to keep Squall captive for more than a matter of days.

Damn Moombas. He’d lay good money that Squall could charm ruby dragons with a ‘Whatever’ and one of those long suffering sighs and his damned near adorable little pouts. The pretty boys got all the breaks.

“They got married,” Seifer shrugged at last. “They have a place near Rai’s folks down on Centra. He works on a fishing boat; she runs the local potion shop.”

Squall buckled the backpack slowly. His fingers were bare for the moment, pale and slender and looking almost too weak and thin to be able to lift that massive hulk of a gunblade that he’d been swinging around the previous night as though it had been as light as air. His gloves had been shoved unceremoniously into the back pocket of his dusty blue denim jeans and peeked out like a lurking pervert. “It’s…. nice to know they’re doing okay,” he murmured softly, after a minute to consider what his reply should be.

“Now that I’m not around, yeah,” Seifer grumbled. He couldn’t prevent a little bitterness from entering his voice, even if he was pretty pleased for the two of them. In fact, one of his wedding presents to Rajin had been shin guards.

Squall glowered at him, scowling as he narrowed his eyes. “You’re doing that thing again.”

“What thing?”

“Feeling sorry for yourself,” Squall replied. The scowl faded into a less than pleased frown but lost none of its intensity.

Seifer paused for a moment. He wasn’t really feeling sorry for himself; he just missed his old posse. Being without them was still alien, they’d even been with him through the majority of the war and deep down Seifer was still a somewhat social creature. He wanted some human company; it just had to be to his high standards. “It’s lack of coffee. And I’m not, you know. I fucking hate fish.”

Regarding him, Squall seemed to struggle inwardly. As though there were something he really wanted to say but just couldn’t. With a brief shrug, he pulled his backpack onto one shoulder and headed for the door. “Let’s get some coffee in you before I’m forced to kick your ass.”

He shrugged into his jacket, picking up the shoulder bags to stroll after Squall as nonchalantly and quickly as he could manage. Seifer had to keep up the façade, the pretence that he was in control even if it killed him. “Leonhart, I’ve known you your whole life. You can’t kick my ass until you’ve had coffee. And not even then.”

“I’m not the one with a hang over.”

“That’s why you might have a smidgen of a chance,” Seifer grinned at him as they reached the too bright sunshine of the parking lot again. Somehow, even though they were both so very much older, and perhaps even wiser, it still felt like walking out into the sunshine with his little brother, just as it had at the orphanage.

 

********

 

After paying the bill and dumping the saddle bags on his bike, Seifer led the way to the ubiquitous local diner. It was straight out of one of the old movies or comic books – gingham table cloths, maroon vinyl booth seats and plastic panelling made to look like wood but failing miserably. On every table a bright red tomato shaped ketchup dispenser sat between cracked and battered salt and pepper shakers.

Seifer didn’t look back to make sure Squall was following him. After all, Squall had already proved that he trusted Seifer by not leaving, or worse, in the night. Seifer half suspected that Squall was latching onto his company as the only worthwhile cohort in the locale as much as he was latching onto Squall. The other half of him suspected that Squall was slipping into the old habits of a childhood of trailing after the older, bigger Seifer.

Seifer strolled to a booth, scooting into the red vinyl prison of kitsch. Squall followed, slipping into the opposite seat. He was lost in thought again, well. Either that or he was being hypnotised by the gingham table cloth.

He only looked up when the waitress bought two cups of coffee and matching menus.

Flashing her one of his brilliant smiles as she turned away, Seifer picked up the menu and unfolded it. Laminated in plastic but still managing to remain slightly sticky, it was a symphony dedicated to the consumption of grease. Seifer could feel his arteries hardening just from looking at it. “No porridge or fish, thank Hyne.”

“Makes a change.”

After ten years of living in Balamb, the only thing Seifer would tolerate to do with fish was in fact fishing. Fish had been served at every meal at Balamb garden for the majority of his stay and even the sight of it on the menu was almost enough to turn his stomach. “Yeah, I might be able to eat.”

Squall sipped the black, bitter coffee with only the briefest of shudders. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” he murmured absently as he finally spread the menu on the table before him.

If it could make Squall flinch, it was obviously in desperate need of milk and sugar. Seifer added as much as he could stand. “Yes, mother.”

“Kadowaki never gave you that lecture?”

Considering the question as he stirred his coffee, the spoon whining against the thick ceramic of the mug, Seifer shrugged. “Most of the ones I remember involved condoms,” he admitted, lifting the mug to his lips but not taking a sip just yet. He was still trying to work out if he’d regret it.

At least Squall hadn’t keeled over from the taste. He took that as good sign and drank. The bitter tone of the coffee wasn’t as bad as he’d first estimated and he downed a good half of the mug’s contents before setting it aside again.

“Your reputation preceded you,” Squall shrugged. He peered up through his bangs, looking so small and young in the booth seat that Seifer felt like they’d snuck out of the Garden somehow. If it hadn’t been for that scar…

Seifer couldn’t imagine where the obsession about contraceptives had come from. He’d never even gone further than kissing a girl. Shaking his head, he smirked at his breakfast companion. “That’s me,” he replied with a long suffering sigh. “School slut.”

A smile, small but still shockingly pretty, curled Squall’s lips. “I knew there was a reason you got those grades.”

“Yeah, I was banging the whole staff. Even Cid, he kept the sweater vest on.”

The smile disappeared abruptly, and Squall’s already pale cheeks turned impossibly paler. “I did not need a mental image on the last one.”

Seifer paused, right there with Squall in his moment of nausea. Pulling a face that reflected some of his disgust, he took another sip of his coffee to steady his nerves. “I may have gone too far on that one, yeah.”

“I think I lost my appetite.”

“Have some pancakes,” Seifer ordered.

To his surprise, the stubborn little ass went along with his suggestion when the waitress appeared, requesting more coffee to go along with it. Seifer himself ordered French toast and strawberries. Then the waitress bustled off, swinging her hips in the slightly over the top way only a waitress with a pot of coffee in one hand and a notepad in the other could manage.

Seifer took the time to look over Squall. There had to be some reason why he looked, well... bad and yet more attractive than Seifer remembered. Maybe it was being out of the field too long that caused his muscles to lose their definition. Hyne knew the weight Squall had lost was a curse. It had taken the delicate edge of his looks and turned it into something less masculine; the fact his hair was getting longer didn’t help.

He’d once joked that Squall could pass for a woman in a dress, now he wasn’t sure it would even take that much. Feeling the need to break the silence, Seifer said, “You need a hair cut.”

He was prepared for a scowl but as astonished when Squall flashed him a quick smirk. “Now I know you are the real Seifer Almasy – you used to tell me that nearly every day back at Garden.”

The waitress interrupted Seifer’s indignant protests that he was the one and only original by bringing their meals. Seifer’s was piled high with a mound of whipped cream which he instantly dumped on the low stack of Squall’s pancakes.

“You’d have done that no matter what I’d ordered, wouldn’t you?”

“Maybe not a cheeseburger,” Seifer mused, stroking his chin thoughtfully before he finally tucked in. The food was less palatable than the coffee had been, but he had long years of practice forcing himself to eat what was available. The fact that his headache finally faded helped, too.

Squall’s mouth slipped into the old, familiar scowl. It was a reassuring expression, and it was almost enough to make Seifer forget that Squall was looking thinner and thinner the more Seifer looked at him. He couldn’t be wasting away right there in front of Seifer’s eyes, it was a physical impossibility, but every time he looked at Squall he seemed a little more fragile. “I suddenly wish I’d ordered something greasier,” Squall muttered to his forkful of pancake.

Seifer nodded at the plate before his breakfast companion. “The pancakes have enough butter on them to lube a sissy convention,” he pointed out. The whipped cream seemed to be melting into the oily pool that had formed at the bottom of the stack and somehow he felt guilty for forcing it onto Squall. Especially with how carefully the brunet was picking at his food. “Have some strawberries.”

“No thanks,” Squall lifted his refilled mug of coffee and took a long drink as though trying to prove that what he had was perfectly fine. “I have plenty of coffee.”

“No wonder you’re a twig, you eat like a girl.”

Seifer expected the whatever that Squall murmured, his familiar apathetic mantra as much of a reassurance as Seifer’s blade at his side. Watching Squall pick at the food before him with his sullen expression that meant he was either pissed off or thinking – and since Seifer hadn’t gone out of his way to piss Squall off that meant he had to be thinking. He sighed. So much for intelligent conversation. “So, any plans? Other than just vanishing into the great Galbadian wastes?”

“I was going to get a bus last night,” Squall looked up at last. His dark eyes had lost their old silver, Shiva given frosty edge, but none of their allure. Seifer never had been able to look away from Squall's eyes when he'd been caught in them. “Saving your ass nixed that.”

“No bus terminal in this dink town. No reason to stop – I guess I owe you a lift to the next burg.”

“I can get a ride with…,” his voice suddenly trailed off and his storm cloud eyes flickered to the counter and the several truckers who sat at it, throwing surreptitious glances their way at every opportunity.

Seifer looked over at the truckers Squall had glanced towards so pointedly and his big brother instincts kicked into overdrive. He didn’t trust them. He didn’t trust them because they weren’t looking at Squall or himself in the way that said they’d been recognised and that there was some money to be made from their capture. They were looking at Squall alright, but their leers were…

Seifer hadn’t seen someone look like that since Rajin had disappeared off on his honeymoon, looking down at Fujin. Behind her back of course, if he’d given her a look like that to her face, she’d have kicked off the bits she could sell and finished the rest off with Pandemona.

Even if he and Squall had been bitter rivals still, Seifer would have insisted on getting Squall close enough to civilization to avoid dealing with the those perverts. Scowling, he half turned to the waiting truckers, slightly slouched and lazy looking, but his posture, the blade junction at his hip and the look on his face all screaming ‘try it.’ “Lots of ways to vanish in this desert,” Seifer drawled, “But most of them? They pick your teeth out of fewmets later to identify you.”

Several of the men caught Seifer eyeing them and stared back.

“Loire would still insist on a state funeral,” Squall murmured, cradling his coffee cup in both hands.

“So sad, everyone in black, weeping… standing around a big fancy box, covered with flowers. Underneath, the glass coffin they always have, and inside on a little blue velvet pillow, three incisors, a molar and two cups of Geezard crap,” Seifer clutched at his chest as though he were heart sick, wounded to the very core of his being. “He looks very natural.”

Squall tilted his head, eyeing his breakfast companion thoughtfully. “Is that a round about way of telling me I look like shit?”

One of the guys at the counter made kissy faces in the mirror, knowing they both could see him.

“I do the art,” Seifer grinned. “I leave the interpretation to others. If you are just going to glare at the pancakes let’s blow. Otherwise there’s going to be a fist fight in about 30 seconds.”

“Don’t mess with the locals, Seifer.” Keeping his gaze on Seifer, not glancing back at the people sitting at the counter on their vinyl and chrome plated steel stools, Squall kept his voice soft and even. It wasn’t the monotone of boredom, or the soft hiss of anger that he could achieve at times but still Seifer knew that he didn’t like that tone. It was dangerous in one of the less fun ways that came with dealing with Squall.

“They aren’t any more local than I am, but they can be painted right into the landscape easy if they don’t start minding their own fucking business,” Seifer said, his voice rising and ending rather loudly.  
All but one of the men turned away, realising that a claim had been made and the pretty brunet had the somewhat beefier man’s protection. The final man, a large gentleman with perpetually red cheeks, a flannel shirt that only a blind and deaf man would have chosen willingly and a thick, curly black beard that looked as real as the waitress’ breasts, openly sneered.

Seifer felt an old smile curl his lips. The kind of smile that made Squall sit up and take notice. The kind of smile that made Squall kick his leg underneath the table.

“Time to go,” Squall ordered, his voice still soft. There was a harder edge to it this time, the kind of edge he must have used in ordering his SeeDs around. Even Seifer had to pay attention to that voice, even if he was able to resist most of it.

“Aw, and the wildlife was just looking interesting.”

Funnily enough, the waitress seemed to agree that it was time for them to go, as she reappeared with two cups of coffee ‘to go’ and handed Squall the check. He paid with a decent tip for her troubles.

“You get the coffee, I’ll follow you,” Seifer said, pushing his jacket back to show the junction point for his blade. He didn’t bother to wait with his hand on it – there was no need. Anyone with half a mind would recognise that junction point, recognise what it really was.

To his surprise, Squall obeyed. Twice in one morning, must be some sort of record. He picked up the Styrofoam cups of coffee and headed for the door; glancing back to make sure Seifer was following him.  
Seifer had grown up enough to resist pushing past the men who were leering at his ‘little brother’. He paused when the guy who hadn’t turned his head away watched Squall pass, his eyes on the point where Squall’s belts should have been crossing if he’d been wearing the set of three and Seifer felt something inside him snap. “The neat thing about staying out of other people’s business,” he said, in the mildest tone possible as he let a fire spell form in his hand, the deep red and brilliant orange hues a haunting dance of dangerous light. “Is that it gives you more time to mind your own.”

The man, more like a bear than a man really – it would have been like a t-rexaur putting the moves on a Grat to let him get close to Squall – turned back to the counter with a snort.

“Thought so.”

Following Squall, Seifer waited until he got outside to let the spell fade, harmlessly, into nothingness.

“What part of me laying low so causing scenes is a bad idea don’t you get?” Squall hissed, scowling. He thrust one cup of coffee into Seifer’s hands, the hot liquid splashing dangerously high up the side of the cup and even crashing into the thin plastic lid that covered the top of it.

“Who will they remember now, you or me?” Seifer snatched the cup from Squall, glowering to match his companion. “And anyway, he never looked at your face.”

Seifer watched the expression on Squall’s face grow even darker. He’d noticed, for once in his Hyne damned life that someone had been leering at his ass. There had been others, of course, Squall was pretty and in a place as cloistered and intense as garden that prettiness hardly went unnoticed. However, Squall had never noticed any of them staring at him.

“Just… get on the bike,” he growled, climbing on himself.

Seifer took some measure of comfort in the fact that Squall’s dusty blue jeans did not quite cling to his ass in the way his leathers had. If Squall had been wearing those, they might not have gotten out of the diner so easily. He didn’t make a habit of staring at Squall’s ass even when he was wearing the leather but it had always seemed that everyone else had. “Drink up, no way you can ride and drink coffee from that.”

“You’re going to wind up getting your ass kicked all over if you don’t learn to keep your head,” Squall replied offhandedly. He sipped at the coffee, the expression on his face fading into his old mask of indifference quickly.

The temptation to rise to the offhand little challenge that Squall had offered in that one comment was strong. He almost looked too weak to even lift that damnable gunblade of his, so Seifer decided to hold off on the urge to fight, at least until he worked out why Squall looked so sick. “Ye of little faith. I’m not so easy to beat up sober.”

Squall scoffed, screwing up the now empty cup in his hand and tossing it into an already overflowing bin near the diner’s door. “I’d offer to test that, but I don’t want to drag an unconscious man on the motorbike.”

Hyperion’s junction had never felt so heavy at Seifer’s hip as it did at that moment. They both lived for battle, both lived for the fight but now was not the time, so Seifer restrained himself. “Let’s not be ugly about this, Squall,” he said taking a long drink of coffee and poking Squall in the ribs. He winced at the touch, but it proved Seifer’s point – Squall was much thinner and worse, weaker, than he had been. “But, you have no magic and no GF. Right now, you look like Cid’s cat could take you.”

“Don’t underestimate me.”

“No,” Seifer shook his head. He’d never underestimate Squall Leonhart again, not after the defeats he’d suffered at Squall’s hand’s already despite Ultimecia’s promises of power. The blows that glittering blue blade of Squall’s had rained down on him were still fresh in his memory. “I’ve learned to plan for you pulling a miracle out of your ass.”

Looking back at the door of the diner, the sign declaring ‘yes, we’re open!’ cheerfully in primary colours from the large glass window decked out in gingham curtains to match the tables, Squall sighed. “Maybe that’s what he was waiting for. Miracles to fly from my ass.”

“Dayum, anodder flyin’ monkey!” Seifer exclaimed in the closest approximation of the local accent that he could manage.

“No, darn it, just another miracle.”

“Allass wanted ta see a flyin’ monkey.”

Squall didn’t smile this time, but the corners of his mouth twitched upwards briefly as though he was very tempted. He looked away for just a moment to regain his composure. “You ready to go, monkey boy?”

With his own smile firmly in place, Seifer tossed the keys for the bike to Squall again. “Sure, I’ll even let you drive,” he offered graciously. Really he wanted a hand free at all times in case one of the leering idiots got ideas above his station and decided to follow them after all. With one hand free he could cast spells; he couldn’t do that without putting them both at risk if he was driving.

Catching the keys in one hand, Squall climbed onto the bike without further comment. He started the engine up, waiting for it to settle into a pleasant burble before inclining his head in invitation to Seifer. “No blowing the place up as we leave.”

“I didn’t even consider it, he lied.” Laughing, Seifer climbed onto the bike, wrapping an arm around Squall as he sipped at his coffee. Most of it was gone, but he didn’t want to waste it just yet. It wasn’t that good, but it had been a while since he’d had coffee as even drinkable as this and he feared that it would be a while before he’d have it as good again.

“You forget I grew up with you.”

Seifer translated that as ‘I’d do it in a heartbeat’ and he grinned at the back of Squall’s head. “It’s still an option. Anyway, head west – I think the towns get bigger that way. We’ll be in a metropolis of 20 or 30 people before you know it.”

Squall’s gloved hand curled around the throttle, revving the engine to a roar as he tucked the stand back up under the bike with the heel of one booted foot. “Promise?” he called over the snarling, easing the motorbike to the edge of the road with careful paces.

“Well, no. I’ve never been this way, for all I know the road is just painted to look like it winds off and actually behind that ridge is a large ditched filled with broken bike parts.”

“And knight parts,” Squall added. “You ready?”

“Naw, the Geezards eat those. Hit it.”

Revving the engine one last time, Squall pulled out onto the otherwise empty road. With nothing ahead of them, and everything behind them, Squall simply opened her up and let her fly, chuckling when Seifer cursed at losing his coffee cup.

********

Seifer hung onto me, almost too tightly. He didn't appreciate speed the way I did - he didn't feel the adrenaline rush that I felt as we flew over the black tarmac. The engine roared as I took the long sweeping bends, accelerating out of them and down the gentle slope that led towards the next town. It made me feel alive, real, to fly like that with the wind in my hair and the heat haze already beginning to rise from the road before us to make the horizon shimmer faintly; Seifer clung to me as though he was afraid.

I felt myself smile at the thought of Seifer being afraid. Whether it was the actual speed or just the fact that he wasn't in control and that wasn't right to him I wasn't entirely sure, but he'd never admit it to me. Not his rival, not one of the few people in the world who had a hope of beating him. Bitch about it, sure, but not admit I had the ability to scare him with his own bike.

It took barely more than an hour to make the next town at the speed I maintained. There was indeed a bus station, which I half regretted seeing even as I was pulling up to the side of the road in front of it.

Just why I felt so reluctant to pull over was all too clear to me. Without Shiva’s presence I remembered more of my childhood. Perhaps entirely too much of my childhood. The games I'd played with Seifer, the trouble we'd been in together when he'd managed to get me to forget Ellone for a little while. I'd never disliked Seifer, especially not at first when we were still at the orphanage. It wasn't until the years of training at garden that we'd found our real rivalry and our reason to fight.

I liked fighting with him. I liked to see him come alive just as much as I did with my gunblade. It made me feel a little more human to know that someone else was like me – that I wasn't all that weird even if I certainly felt it.

Even if he did have the ability to drive me insane with his constant questions and poking and prodding, I liked being around him. It made Balamb, at least the good parts of Balamb, seem a little less distant.

Being on my own had always come easily to me, even if Rinoa's coaxing had bought me to accept a few select people. However I'd always had Shiva's presence to keep me company, her soft sweet voice to keep me from being truly alone at those most desperate of moments. .

Now I didn't even have that, thanks to the meddling of Xu and President Loire.

That was the thing that hurt most. Losing Shiva. I could have given my position up much more easily if only they hadn't taken her away from me.

"Better check the schedule, if the bus only stops at Yule..." Seifer's voice trailed off over my shoulder. He sounded just as reluctant as I felt.

It took another minute for me to climb off the bike and check the schedule at the door. I was disappointed to find that a coach with the eventual destination of Deling would be along shortly.

"There'll be one along in twenty minutes, hold on," I told him, disappearing into the station just long enough to buy a last minute ticket for the trip. Still that took ten minutes and by the time I got back to the bike to collect my bag, Seifer was leaning forward, stretching out to grab the handlebars and ease the knots of tension from sitting in the same position for has long as he had, out of his back. "Thanks for the lift."

"I owed you," he sat up suddenly, the bike tipping by a few heart stopping degrees that were enough to make me lay a hand on the tank to steady it, even though he had the situation well under control. "I owe you for breakfast too."

He was reaching for his wallet already but I stopped him with a shake of my head. "I don't want any money from you," I told him. I knew I didn't have too much left from what I'd bought with me but at least when I reached Deling I could risk accessing my accounts before disappearing into the crowd. Besides, I liked knowing that Seifer owed me something. Made him less likely to attack first and ask questions later the next time we met up.

He rolled his eyes, a gesture he'd undoubtedly picked up from me over the years. "Tickets are expensive."

"So is fuel. And oil," I nodded to the slow but steady leak from his machine. Knowing Seifer's talent with the mechanical, it likely needed a five gil seal and a little care and he had no idea of either. He'd always been the creative one, the showman.

Everything that I wasn't.

"Yeah, well... Can't exactly say don't forget to write."

I wasn't sure if that was supposed to be a dig at my memory or whether he was just attempting a stab at polite conversation. Though this was Seifer and he was to polite conversation what I was to conversation at all. "Are you heading off now?"

"I'll hang, I guess. Make sure you aren't stranded," he shrugged, smiling again. I blamed the lack of Shiva in my head for thinking he was handsome when he smiled. Usually she'd be there to tease me about anything like that, even the slightest attraction. He was attractive. Old feelings that I’d tried to choke down and wish away flared up in me briefly. Yeah I’d had a thing for him. I’d probably had a thing for him for too long. It should have been gone after what had happened with the war but seeing him again...

"Thanks. Where will you go?" I pushed the thoughts away and dropped my bag on the floor to dig out a baseball cap. At least it kept anyone from looking at me too closely. Really I should have cut or dyed my hair, maybe invested in something to hide my scar but I didn't want to have to change just because of some idiot who thought he could force me into his custody to make up for seventeen years of being away. I liked my hair as it was - though it was getting a little too long now even for me - and the baseball cap usually kept people from looking too closely at my face. At least the scar was fainter than it had been once.

Seifer thought on that for a moment, his green eyes turned towards the road and whatever lay at the end of it. "Wherever the mood strikes. Freedom. You?"

Freedom suited him. Out of Garden he seemed so much better. Maybe not openly happier, but perhaps more at peace.

I found myself shrugging. Freedom sounded good after the time I'd spent cooped up in Loire's Palace. Seifer was probably right; anyone else would look on that place as a blessing. I thought it was a curse and a cage - I wanted my real life of gunblades and battles. I wanted to live as I chose, not as someone tried to mould me to be. I'd never even wanted to command Balamb, why would the life of a prince be any better? "Deling for now but then I don't know. Maybe WinHill for a while, but not Balamb or Esthar. I can't risk it yet."

He gestured in the direction his bike was pointed which I guessed was approximately south east. A string of minuscule towns and villages lay that way, then beyond ,the ocean and Centra. "The lighthouse is still there."

"Might be nice to go back."

"Maybe we'll meet up," he said hesitantly.

I admit I half wondered if he'd have even offered if he knew me as well as he thought he did. Everyone pretended to know me, some in more annoying ways than others, but no one did. Sure a few had come close to it, but none of them really had even the faintest clue what I really felt, nor that I liked it that way. Letting people in took a lot out of me. Even the people I'd fought with in the war, even if I trusted them with my life, were still on the outside looking in.

"Maybe," I said at last. "Be nice to see a familiar face once in a while."

We fell silent, running out of things to talk about. It was just as well really as the bus finally appeared, lumbering down the road and into its stop with a rush of diesel fumes, hot air and dust. It looked somewhat less battered than the last one I'd been on and at least it wasn't pissing oil like someone's motorcycle.

"Guess this is my ride."

"Yeah," Seifer said. It could have been my ears playing tricks on me but I could have sworn he sighed. "It looks like it will get you some place decent. Sit with an old lady if you can, they usually have candy and won't want a feelie for it."

Seifer Almasy had little or no sense of decorum. I'd grown used to comments like that over the years and I wasn't sure I wanted to know more, particularly after his reaction in the diner. "Sounds like the voice of experience."

He gave me that look that told me there was a very long and most likely sordid story behind that. Usually it was one he’d made up, or heard and altered to suit his needs. Very occasionally it was true. The true ones were the worst. “They will talk your ears off though. Just smile and nod, you should be okay.”

I cast my eye over the bus. It was only half full and Seifer knew that I didn’t smile if I could help it. “I’ll try for a seat on my own first,” I said, shouldering my bag. It was definately feeling too light, as I’d thought, but at least there would be stops along the way where I could find food and drink to last me a while longer.

“Well… good luck,” he offered me his hand like he’d only just remembered he was supposed to shake.

Since he’d made the effort, I decided to match his offering. I peeled off my leather glove to shake his hand. He was still strong, maybe even stronger than me without his junctions. Hyperion was a master blade too and her weight was incredible. Lionheart’s adamantine blade made my blade a little lighter but no less powerful.

I wanted to fight him on equal terms again. A sparring session, but there was no time. “Thanks. You too, Seifer.”

“See ya around, Squirt,” he laughed when I visibly flinched at the old nickname. Hyne I hated it when he called me that. Of course he knew that and it was the only reason he continued to call me it any time he could. “Don’t let the nice man in the men’s room touch your peepee.”

I meant it when I said Seifer Almasy has no sense of decorum. Or taste. “I won’t so long as you stop getting drunk and throwing yourself at gangs of SeeDs and soldiers in the hope of killing yourself.

“Naw, too hard to find anyone good enough to do it,” he said it lightly and I was relieved to know he wasn’t planning a repeat. “I’ll even lay off the sauce, just for you.”

I was still holding his hand. I don’t know why, but it took real effort to let him go and back up a step. Well I suspected why, but I was trying not to think about that. I needed more practice at the not thinking thing. “See you later, Almasy.”

Seifer gave me a look that made me think he would have ruffled my hair if he could have reached me. He finally slid into the driving position of his motorcycle, tapping the oil gauge once to see if it was reading correctly. With a smile, he nodded. “Not if I see you first.”

I knew it was only a joke. Somewhere during breakfast we’d made our peace. Maybe when he’d tried to out glower the truckers who’d sat at the counter. Maybe it had just taken being around each other without trying to kill each other. That was kind of novel for us, come to think about it. “Whatever,” I said, and headed for the bus.

Just for a moment, before I climbed the stairs into my ride to Deling, I looked back at him. He was sitting up straight still and he saluted me. A SeeD salute, not the one he used to favour Xu with that involved two fingers from each hand and was usually performed to the back of her head with an expression that could really only be termed manic.

He never saluted anyone. Usually, I did but today I just offered him a smile and went to find a seat.

I’d been right, and I found a seat to myself, dumping my bag beside me as I sat at the window. Seifer was leaning down on his handlebars, waiting. As nice as it was to have someone to say goodbye to me, I wanted him to stop me. I wanted him to ask me to travel with him a little further and give me a chance to follow him like I had when we were kids.

Mostly I wanted a chance to not be alone for another day or so. Imagine, the ice prince not wanting to be alone. Hyne, maybe Xu and Esthar had fucked me over more than I'd suspected.

The bus rumbled into life again and started to pull away slowly. I nodded to him and settled back into my seat. Watching the landscape roll past the window held no attraction after hearing and feeling it so intently on Seifer’s motorcycle so I closed my eyes with the intention of getting some sleep.

I hadn’t felt rested since long before I’d left Esthar, I hadn’t been sleeping well. If I slept now I’d be able to wait to get some rest in Deling.

Behind me somewhere a female voice, husky and cracked discussed the missing Estharian prince. Me. News had reached further than I’d hoped. It also meant I couldn’t risk sleeping there – so I pulled my cap down over my eyes and shrank in my seat.

The best laid plans…

I don’t know how long we’d been on the road when I heard the driver cursing at something. I lifted my head just in time to catch Seifer tearing hell for leather up the road, maybe even as fast and hard as I’d pushed the bike that morning. He passed us in the blink of an eye and disappeared from view before I could mutter anything more than “idiot.”

I was following him again, after all.


	4. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Squall steps off the bus into the red dust of the Galbadian desert. The rest stop brings a chance to stretch his legs, and perhaps find that familiar face.

Chapter Three.  
“Two great talkers will not travel far together.”  
Spanish Proverb

 

The bus drew to a rather abrupt halt, kicking up clouds of red dust and diesel fumes again.

Squall sighed and glanced out of the window. The town they’d pulled into some four hours later was still a fair way from Deling and he really didn’t relish the thought of another journey on the bus. He’d half listened to the old women somewhere behind him discussing the Estharian prince and the fairytale that seemed to be spilling out across the world, unable to decide whether he should laugh or shake his head in disgust.

Usually he would have stayed right there, kept his head down and waited, but both his encounter with Seifer Almasy and the conversation he’d overheard made him restless and edgy. So, grabbing his bag, he rose from his seat and followed the rest of the people trudging off their mode of transport to stretch their legs and take a break.

As he reached the last step, he paused.

Seifer Almasy was leaning against the wall in an attempt to look cool, two bottles of soda held between the fingers of his left hand. He wore the holier-than-thou smirk, his head tilted as he watched Squall finally step down from the bus, his incredibly green eyes shining like a cat's.

Squall was tempted to walk straight past him and head into the terminal but after Seifer had streaked past the bus like a bat out of hell, he had to resist. At least Seifer had made some sort of effort to beat him to the next stop and that could only mean one of two things - that Seifer had realized they'd parted without duelling for the first time in their lives and that he hated to break a trend, or that he wanted something else from Squall.

Seifer offered him one of the bottles. It was still cold when Squall took it, condensation beading on the surface and he could barely resist the urge to draw it across his forehead. He had always disliked the heat - even before he'd begun to junction Shiva - and yet he'd still travelled across the Galbadian desert despite knowing this. It was harder to locate someone in the vast expanses of sand, especially if one moved off the main roads, the long curves of black tarmac cutting through the orange red sand like snake trails, and it had seemed his best bet of avoiding anyone who'd recognize him or anyone who worked for his father.

So far, the first had been disproved. Odds were the second would be proved wrong as well now, and Squall was at a loss for what to do. He had no choice but to stay on the main road until he located some reliable transportation and the chances of that before he reached Deling were slim to none.

Unless Seifer was hanging around the bus stop for what Squall assumed he was.

Turning his back to the wall and leaning next to Seifer, Squall twisted off the plastic bottle cap with a satisfying hiss of escaping carbon dioxide. The brown-black drink bubbled furiously for a moment, but did not reach the neck and Squall took a long, satisfying swig before he spoke. "Don't I know you from somewhere?" he asked, arching one delicate eyebrow at Seifer.

"Could be," Seifer nodded, his lips pursed in mock contemplation as he stretched. The soft crack of his shoulders as he held the position with his arms high over his head was only barely audible but it meant that he'd been waiting for a while. That proved that there was something on his mind and that it involved Squall - or he would have been long gone, a speck on the horizon. "I hang around bus terminals a lot."

"Sounds like a bad habit."

Grinning, the very epitome of bad habits and bad news, Seifer cocked his head to one side. He regarded Squall with a look that was pure smug control, waiting to ask his question, whatever that was. "I'm trying to quit."

Lowering his gaze to the bottle in his hand, Squall frowned. He eased his thumbnail under the corner of the label, wrinkling it and easing it away from the adhesive that left sticky lines across the plastic. "What are you doing here, Seifer?" he asked nonchalantly. He kept his feelings and opinions hidden, making sure that no hint of the hope he felt would creep into his words.

"Squall, listen. You are all over the news...," Seifer straightened suddenly, moving to block Squall from the view of the passers by. With his voice low and careful, in an almost dangerous tone, he continued. "And since we aren't going anywhere in particular, there is no reason not to go together. Save on bus fare. Split gas costs and... stuff."

"And stuff?" he almost chuckled at the phrase tacked hastily onto the end of the suggestion. The relief he felt was tangible, as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders and he was relieved to not be alone again. He'd been used to being on his own before the war, but now with no GF and absolutely nothing to keep his mind sharp and alert besides himself he didn't want to be alone any more. "You can be so eloquent at times."

Seifer knocked Squall's head lightly with the bottle he held. There was no menace or force behind it, just a quick movement to let Squall know that he did not appreciate the comment. Of course, he had to do something to show that he wasn't pleased with the comment, even if he didn't really care that much.

"I haven't seen the news lately," Squall said softly, ducking the plastic bottle. Glancing back at the bus, he wondered just how much had made it out from Esthar about his escape, and whether Laguna Loire had bothered telling the whole story. Of course he wouldn't do that, why tell your adoring public that you'd almost kidnapped your own son and now he'd run away to be free of your incessant talking and worrying. "But, alright. I'll come with you."

With a grin, Seifer held his free hand out to Squall expectantly. "Sell back your ticket, I'll pack your stuff," he ordered.

Sliding the backpack off his shoulder and setting the straps in Seifer's open hand, Squall looked up at him curiously. Seifer was still taller, and as far as he could tell, still growing. He seemed leaner than he'd been but still well built, muscular and handsome, and Squall already knew that he was still junctioned and carrying a stock of magic. "Why'd you change your mind?"

"Who says I did?" Seifer asked, a defensive air to his words. He moved closer to Squall and kept his voice soft, painfully aware that people were wandering past them constantly. People who if they managed to see past him to the dark haired youth, would realize that it was this missing prince from Esthar.

Squall shrugged. "You're here, aren't you?"

"Well we were going the same way and it seemed stupid to..." Seifer's voice trailed off and he shook his head. "Look, just take care of the ticket thing already, okay?"

"Right."

Squall sidestepped the taller, older man and turned to head into the terminal. Compared to the bright day outside, the building seemed too dark and it took a few moments for his eyes to get used to the change. A handful of others, mostly people who'd arrived on the same bus that he had, milled about, looking at schedules or simply stretching their legs. A small rack of newspapers and magazines, the majority of them dog-eared things that had been thumbed through by any and all passengers who'd just happened to get off at this stop to take a break stood in one corner.

He joined the short queue for the ticket counter, avoiding curious glances as much as he could.

Never had such a short queue taken so long to move. The woman behind the counter, a freckled thing with bleach blonde hair drawn back into a painfully tight ponytail and who couldn't be much older than thirty five rattled off intimate stories about her children and Hyne only knew what else to each person who had the unfortunate chance to talk to her. Squall listened, or rather he tried to but the drip of his brain out of his ear proved too distracting to listen through to the end.

When Squall finally reached the counter, thrusting the ticket through the small gap at the bottom of the window, he scowled at his reflection in her thick glasses. He'd seen thinner glass in the space station. In fact, he was sure she had most of the silicone in Galbadia perched on the end of her nose framed in pink plastic. Her eyebrows had been removed completely, replaced with a too high arc of brown pencil that didn't seem to be quite... right. Tipping his head, Squall realized it wasn't his eyes - she had drawn them on unevenly.

"Aw honey, ya changed yer mind about Deling? I un'erstand, I don't like them big city folks myself," she drawled, counting out his refund in the smallest bills she could manage just so it would take longer. "Y'all are better stayin' out here with us normal folk."

Glancing over his shoulder, Squall spotted Seifer standing in front of the rack of magazines, his arms folded across his chest. He was trying - and actually succeeding - to look menacing. He managed to turn away someone who dared to walk too close to the magazine rack with only the sinister glare that implied 'Yes, I am an asshole and no, I'm not going to move' and the gentlest shift of his arms. He was blocking the papers, his eyes strafing the room casually as he tried to take in everything at once.

Seifer tapped one foot restlessly. Squall could see the way he held himself ready, he didn't feel secure here and something had set him on edge, something had gotten to him.

Squall caught his eye at long last, tipping his head curiously and pointing at Seifer discretely. 'Are they looking for you?'

He shook his head and tapped his wrist in an attempt to hurry Squall up.

Something was definitely wrong. Though he wasn't sure what it was, Squall had to get out of the bus terminal as fast as possible, and he needed to get away from anyone who could recognize either of them.

Finally the woman pushed his money through the small slot with a bright smile. "Here y'are honey, thank ya fer..."

Squall snatched up the pile of bills and headed for the exit as quickly as he could without drawing further attention to himself. Keeping his head down, he stepped out onto the red dust of the Galbadian desert and marched for Seifer's bike.

Seifer caught him up quickly enough, his long legs matching Squall's pace easily. "Hyne's holy ass, what took so long? She engraving the gil herself?" he growled, his fist tightening on the paper he held enough to wrinkle the thin sheets.

"She wanted me to hear about her three kids, I think."

"But did you have to wait while she gave birth to each one? Get on the bike."

Scowling, Squall glanced back. The driver of the coach he'd rode in on lingered on the bottom step of his vehicle, watching them with a curious eye, glancing between them and the open doorway of the stop. He was frowning, lost in thought and seemed unsure of just what he should do next - Squall didn't want to give him a chance to decide.

"She wouldn't give me the money," he said, checking that his backpack had been stowed safely. It wasn't that he didn't trust Seifer to handle his belongings, but with the bag containing everything he had left of his previous life - aside from the bits and pieces he had left in Esthar that he would likely never again see - he wanted to double check that it was safe and sound in Seifer's saddlebag. It was, the straps anchored to the inside of the bag that contained it, and it's buckles firmly fastened. "What was on the newspapers?"

As soon as he straightened, Seifer smacked Squall in the chest with the rolled up paper he held. He didn't say a word, simply watching Squall for some reaction, some acknowledgement to his face being plastered all over the Galbadian newspapers, half a world away from the country that was so desperate to find him.  
Feeling the colour drain away from his face, Squall sighed. The headlines 'Reward of 100,000 Gil for word of Missing Prince' sprawled across the paper, the article going on to reference half a dozen pages inside.

The picture was not a bad one by any means, clear enough to show his prominent scar. At least his hair had been pushed back out of his eyes, annoying him too much that evening to let it fall free - he could hide a little so long as the images inside hadn't been taken later in the evening. He'd been caught mid-glare at the press conference and, not for the first time, he cursed his father for ever setting up the interview.

"I wish I'd kept that camera," he scowled, recognizing the pose. It had been taken as he'd stalked off the stage, a reporter getting too close for comfort and yelling questions as he'd blinded Squall with the flashbulb from his camera.

"Just get on the bike," Seifer ordered. "Put my helmet on and let's get the fuck out of here."

"We need...," the younger man began as he pulled the baseball cap off and tucked it into one of the saddle bags and pulled the helmet on. "To head off the beaten track, I think."

“This track isn’t even bruised. We need to find some lost civilization.”

Squall was as lost in the desert as a Gayla would be. Without a map to check, he wasn’t even sure which way to head – and Seifer’s presence would not be appreciated in Deling city, not after his brief but busy stint as the sorceress’ knight. “Such as?” he asked, waiting for a suggestion in vain.

“Damned if I know. You drive,” Seifer replied.

Climbing on the bike, Squall waited until Seifer was seated safely behind him. His arm snaked around Squall’s waist, he took the paper again when Squall offered it, folding it up easily with just one hand. “I hate that picture,” he said, turning the key and starting the engine with a low, rumbling growl.

He could almost hear the grin in Seifer’s voice when he spoke again. “It’s not your good side,” he nodded – lifting the paper away from them both and from the bike as he summoned a fira spell into his hand. The flickering flames began to lick up along the folded tabloid, the pages quickly blackening before the whole thing was consumed in the dancing unnatural fire. Finally he tossed it aside, watching for a moment as the fire died away and the ashes were caught by the wind, stirred into the dancing dust of the desert in a tumble of fading red embers and black specks.

“You didn’t even get to see the six pages inside of me telling reporters what I thought of them,” Squall said absently, pulling the bike back onto the road slowly. Not that he’d had much to say that night in Esthar, but somehow the reporters had taken a few dozen words and turned it into several pages worth of gossip, trite information and worst of all downright lies about him. In the mirror, he caught a brief glimpse of those people who had been awake enough to notice the newspaper rack stare after the two of them.

“Six pages?” the older man laughed, resting his chin on Squall’s shoulder as the brunet began to build up speed. “What did they do, type whatever over and over in thirty-six point type?”

Squall smiled to himself faintly. “Something like that,” he murmured, turning down a less used track with a broken sign pointing to WinHill quite some distance away. There were other signs on the post, broken and worn by sun and sand, but the sight of that name had given him all the reason he’d needed to turn off the main road.

 

********

 

Okay, it was the newspapers that really gave me a reason to stop. Even if I didn’t see them until I reached the next stop for the bus that had just taken my little brother off into the distance. It wasn’t the fact that I was lonely or anything, nope.

I was kinda surprised that he even agreed to come with me. Dunno why, after all I am the best choice in any situation.

We’d stopped at some tiny little town for a late lunch and worked out how far we were from the next port of call. We were a long way from anywhere and I figured maybe it would be best if we spent a night under the stars. It was too far to make it to the next town in one night, and besides, if someone at the lousy bus station had put two and two together and figured out enough to contact his dad, it would do us good to avoid hotels for a couple of nights.

Stocking up on supplies in hick central was… awkward. To say the least. I remembered Squall being a fussy eater from when we were kids and I was half convinced that everyone who happened to glance his way either wanted to turn him in – hell, if I were less likely to get my own ass arrested I might have considered it myself – or do something wholly inappropriate to my little brother who also happened to be the prince of Esthar. It just wasn’t right for a guy to attract attention like he did.

I was getting tired, and he wasn’t holding onto me quite as tight as he had been, so I pulled over. We wound up finding a sheltered spot out in the desert, far away enough and well hidden enough to keep anyone from the road seeing our fire, but not so far as we wouldn’t be able to get back to it in the morning. It was getting cold too, and I was worried about him with how weird he was feeling against my back.

He climbed off the bike as soon as we stopped. The ground was dry and cracked under the tires as we pushed it along to the rocky out cropping that was going to be our shelter for the evening, but where the stones had protected the ground from the wind, the sand was still piled up. It’d be awkward and probably cold come morning, but it was better than sleeping on the harder stuff. Even if we’d both done it a hundred times before, it’s always difficult to get up the next morning.

Then again, it was pretty difficult to get off the bike too. “Okay, let's do this,” I said as soon as I was on my feet.

He gave me the look of pure confusion that had had girls fawning over him day after day when we were at garden. He was a pretty boy whether he liked it or not and for some insane reason that cold bastard thing made women fall over themselves to flirt with him. Not that he ever stopped thinking long enough to actually realise they were flirting with him, let alone actually do something about it. “Do what?”

“Spar!” I couldn't help giving a little huff of annoyance. It was me, what did he expect me to ask for? Every time we met up we ended up fighting, and we'd been together more than twenty four hours – overall, not including the few we'd lost while he'd been on the bus because I'd been an idiot – if we didn't spar soon the world was going to tumble off it's axis. I'd hate to do that by accident. On purpose was a different matter.

“Oh, Okay.”

That had me worried. Squall was always up for sparing and usually he was quiet but not so... bland about it. “Are you alright? The last time you didn't want to fight it was because you were running a fever and about to break out in spots,” I touched my hand to his forehead. He felt fine. Maybe a little warm but not like he'd been that morning.

As soon as I touched him he leant away from me and took a step back. “I've been on your bike long enough that I don't know if I can straighten my legs yet.”

“Okay, that's valid,” I ruffled his hair before he could get too far away. “However, I too am going to be using the rare hunched like a drunk who just got kicked in the balls stance, so deal.”

He stretched with his arms up over his head and his eyes closed. At least we could work out some of those kinks with some sparring. “Fine, if you're so determined.”

“Oh come on. It's going to the movies and not getting popcorn. We have to do it.”

“It's in the contract, hm?”

“Bred in the bone,” I grinned. It was so easy to get him to duel, too easy sometimes. It was the way we bonded, but it was dangerous. People didn't understand us and I think I preferred it that way. Since so many people wanted to be close to Squall, I loved being the only one who could see this side of him and live, the first lick of excitement crawling through his veins, that spark behind his eyes beginning to shine. I was pretty sure the people he'd killed had seen it, but hell they didn't count. I wondered if Xu had any idea what she'd let get away from her when she'd gotten rid of Squall. With the right motivation and a a year or two more experience he could be taking out half the Galbadian army on his own.

Of course, he pretty much had done that a few months back. Well, as he would say, whatever.

“Where would we be without your drama?” Squall rolled his eyes, his hand moving to his hyper-junction and curling around the handle of his weapon as it was drawn into our world. The blue flare of his blade coming to life again was a hell of a sight to behold. Any lesser man would have been a little afraid – I just thought it was cool.

I pulled Hyperion, swinging her to test her balance as though somehow when she was out of my sight something could have happened to her. As if. I rarely even left her hyper-junction alone unless I was drinking. Fortunately tonight I was a lot more sober, a lot more with it and more than ready to take on Squall Leonhart. My muscles were already aching for a fight. “In a colder, sadder place. Just for you, I won't use magic.”

“Until you're loosing,” Squall said coolly, resting the back of his blade on his shoulder. The glittering light of the adamantine blade gave him an oddly eerie halo, and I missed Shiva on his behalf. There'd always been a certain glow to his eyes when she was junctioned and it would have been very intimidating. For a lesser man. Me, well like the blade I just thought it looked cool.

I gave him my best grin. “You know me so well.”

“Just remember there's no infirmary here.”

“Well, I can cast Curaga and you can't hit me on a good day, so who cares?”

He arched one eyebrow at me, gave me a half smirk and echoed “Can't hit you on a good day?”

“Not even on your best day, Leonhart,” I shrugged, moving casually into a clear area and into a ready stance. Casually pissing each other off before a fight was a common preamble. It was like the lightning before the roll of thunder, like sniffing the wine before you tasted it. Couldn't get into a good duel without trading a few insults first.

“Looked in the mirror lately, Seifer?” he asked rather pointedly. He hadn't taken his eyes off me even for a second, and though his posture was relaxed, I knew in a heartbeat he could snap to a ready stance, or attack, or defend. Wouldn't waste my time on anyone who couldn't impress me just a little.

“No, my loveliness blinds me.”

“Well there's evidence of at least one hit right between your eyes,” he gestured at his own scar, the one he'd received barely moments before I'd gained mine.

“Nothing but a lucky hit,” I shrugged. “Anyway, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.”

“You have a really short memory,” Squall rolled his eyes, and I could already tell he was a little huffy at that particular battle supposedly slipping from my mind. Of course it hadn't, not even for a heartbeat. In my darkest, bitterest moments I'd glowered at that scar in the mirror and hated everything it stood for. Now... now it was just a fact like the sun rising and setting and the two of us needing coffee more than we needed air. “Tch. Blonds.”

“Yeah, I've stood here for so long I've forgotten what we were doing.”

“I'm waiting for an attack and you are living in high fantasy.”

“Oh you want me to go first? I thought we agreed the little shit always went first.”

“Yeah, that's why I'm waiting for you to attack.”

“I always have to do all the work,” I grumbled, just long enough to distract him before I charged at him. I bought my blade up in a sharp arc, aiming for his head. Unlike most people, Squall and I never sparred to miss, we were all about trying to kill each other from the moment we started fighting. It had been like that for years, just as soon as we'd out performed our instructors and frankly pretty poor older sparring partners. Best way to learn to kill is to actively try and kill the guy you're training against. Sure we were good enough to – should we need to – turn the blade at the last second for most blows but I couldn't remember the last time I'd needed to. Aside from the whole giving him a scar the morning or our exam thing.

He blocked me easily of course, and turned his blade to force me away so he could counter-attack just as quickly. The sparks flew from our blades as I blocked him again.

There wasn't as much power in his strikes as there had been – it was easy enough to blame his losing the Gfs for that, after all, both of us were junctioned to the hilt for strength and Hyne only knew what else almost the entire time we’d faced off against each other. Despite all that, he was just as fast as he had been, maybe even faster. As the Lionheart blade met mine, the blue glow of pulse ammunition flaring in his adamantine blade, I felt alive again for the first time. This was what I was meant to do, meant to be. Lost in the battle, proving which of us was the better man.

I forced him back with a few well placed strikes, and he got a lucky swipe in that would have trimmed a few hairs if I had as shaggy a mop on my head as he did.

Even with him unjunctioned we were pretty evenly matched. My skills were a little rusty and I was running low on all magic – my GF didn't junction for the things that half of my Garden Gfs had been able to but he was mine and only mine. Almost like the way Squall and Shiva were. Just another one of the reasons it pissed me off so much that someone had dared to take her away from him.

Eventually we locked blades. From somewhere that I've never seen, Squall pulled some crazy strength and forced me back a step or two, making me slide in the sand. He didn't let up for a minute either, following me and trying a thrust.

It was too wild and blind, I wasn't the only one who'd been knocked off balance for a second there.

It was the perfect opening for me to turn Hyperion and disarm him with her blade catcher, and I pulled the gunblade right out of his hands.

Which, apparently was the perfect moment for him to demonstrate a new move to me. As I tried to drop Lionheart and claim my victory, Squall dropped low and spun around to sweep my legs right out from under me, Hyperion and Lionheart both falling off to the side as I landed flat on my back, the air knocked right out of my lungs.

When I could get my breath back, I glared up at him and cursed. “You learned that from the chickenwuss, didn't you?”

“Yep,” he picked up his blade nonchalantly and stood over me, the faintest hint of smugness on his lips. That's my boy. I taught him everything he knew. Except the leg sweep, he was getting too good at the thinking outside the box thing, maybe a little too much like me.

“We'll call that a draw.”

He held his blade out at arms length, so the sharp tip just touched my throat. He could probably decapitate me with a flick of his wrist and for a horrible moment I wondered if he was considering it. Then he shrugged, shouldered the blade smoothly and nodded. “Okay.”

The little bastard was just claiming the win, even if he wasn't doing it verbally. “That was just grandstanding,” I smirked up at him. I should know – I taught him that too.

“Whatever, Almasy,” he said and offered me his free hand. I graciously let him help me up and he moved into his ready stance again as soon as he'd let my hand go. “Again?”

“No, I landed on what I hope is a cactus and not an overly friendly geezard.”

Squall looked behind me. “It's a geezard. In their terms, that means you are now married, congratulations.”

I wasn't sure if I liked the new, more outwardly sarcastic Squall Leonhart, but he was certainly a lot of fun to talk to. Maybe a little harder to piss off, unfortunately, but this was a new and different kind of fun. “I'll name our first born after you.”

“I'll be an uncle, great.”

“Since I'm in such a delicate condition, you go get some stones for the fire pit and I’ll unpack the gear,” I told him and to my surprise he actually did it. I couldn’t believe it, but he did. I should have ordered him around more often if he was going to obey without a second thought.

We built the fire together – We’d bought some basics back in town like charcoal to keep a fire going, a couple of blankets. Between the two of us and a Fira it didn’t take long to get it going, and I was kinda glad I’d bothered to keep him around. It was nice just being around someone again too. Just because I can be alone without going too stir crazy doesn’t mean I have to enjoy it.

“Here,” I said, tossing him the insulated tarp blanket that we needed to break in. “Throw this down. Keep the chill off our butts.”

Again, he did as he was told and I thanked Hyne for small mercies. I was still half expecting him to argue just because he could, and I knew it would start sooner or later.

“Throw me my bag too,” he said. He was kneeling on the tarp, tugging the gloves of his fingers one by one with his teeth. Sometimes I swear he’s doing that shit on purpose. If he were slightly more observant I’d say it he definitely was but people had always looked at him, even if he’d never been the type to really notice. “I’ll start some coffee.”

“Hyne, that sounds great.”

No matter who you are, where you’re from or how old you are, there is one thing you will take with you from garden when you leave it – a coffee addiction. And garden coffee is so awful you could probably kill a chocobo with it if you tried. Every morning we all trudged down to the cafeteria like good little caffeine zombies looking to feed our addiction and wake up. Nothing quite like mind control through java. Really I blame the early mornings and the very late nights at times but there’s always some part of me that will wonder just what they were putting in that brew to have us all so hooked.

Some days when Leonhart and I had a sparring match scheduled, I had to take him coffee just to get him onto words, let alone words with more than one syllable. He never really said "Whatever" until sometime after ten, when he was satisfactorily re-caffeinated.

So he made coffee in the one mug we had between the two of us while I got the ration fruit cups, sausages and buns we’d managed to pick up. He can take coffee any which way, I need cream and sugar to make it at least drinkable – fortunately he does plan ahead occasionally and he’d palmed a few of the little packets of sugar and pots of creamer from where we’d grabbed lunch.

He gave me this funny look as he handed me the mug. I was about to ask him what he was thinking in the vain hope of getting an answer besides whatever, so I’m an optimist, when he gave me this little half smile like he had when we were kids and said “We’re almost domestic.”

“But only almost,” I added, taking a swig of the java. He’d made it strong, but it was the best cup of coffee I’d had all day and I didn’t want to criticize it for fear of him never making a damn cup again. I knew he wouldn’t. Just to be a little bastard.

“Thank Hyne.”

I couldn’t help grinning at the relief in his voice. It was enough to make me wonder just what darling Rinny had done to the poor kid. Oh I loved her even before I was throwing her to insane sorceresses but Hyne, give me a woman with a backbone any day. Though they usually ended up more my friends than my lovers, just look at Fujin. “Yeah, I hate it when they tag your ear and stuff.”

“Or worse,” Squall shrugged.

“Not going there.”

I sat down beside him at last, bringing the couple of thick blankets that I knew weren’t going to be enough to keep the two of us warm unless we shared them and looked out across the rolling desert. The sun was just sinking below the horizon, the last gasp of light turning the sky yellow, red and orange and fading into the deepest blue black. The moon was already out, and the stars were beginning to litter the sky. Out in the desert it seemed that the sky just went on forever.

“It’s the first time I’ve really stopped to watch it,” Squall murmured so low I barely realised he’d spoken. He leant forward, checking the food and turning it so we wouldn’t get killed by something as lowly as a sausage, even if it was Zell’s greatest desire for his own end. I leant back against the rocks, they were cooling now that the light was fading and it seemed so quiet that we must have been the last two people in the world.

Part of me felt sorry for Squall, that he’d never had time to stop and watch the sunset, though we’d spent plenty of times together before watching it rise so we’d have light enough for one of our duels. “They say just before the sun goes, if the atmosphere is right, there’s a green flash.”

He looked at me over his shoulder, not knowing whether to believe me or not. I can’t lie for shit unless it’s a joke – matron instilled one good habit in me at least. His face was cast into shadow, faint flickers from the red glow of the sun and the coals of our camp fire catching just the edge of his face and lighting his hair a deep red brown. “Really?”

“Yeah,” I nodded. That alone was enough to have him believe me. There is some honour among gunblade specialists. Except when we’re duelling, then the gloves really come off. “I always look, but I’ve never seen it. I don’t know if you make a wish or your ass falls off when you do see one though.”

“I’ll make a wish,” he passed me a bun and a couple of the fire blackened sausages. “Your ass can fall off.”

There is nothing like eating out in the open. Usually I preferred to do it with Raijin, Fujin and enough beer to kill a whole herd of chocobo or – if we were feeling particularly desperate to wipe out a few braincells a bottle or two of vodka – but now they were married they weren’t as much fun. I suppose everyone has to settle down sooner or later. Leonhart was good enough company for the night though. “Wish for a million gil, dumb shit,” I took a bite of the sandwich. Needed ketchup. “My ass can fall off on it’s own. In fact, I was afraid it was going to before we found a place to camp. We need more padding on that seat.”

Squall sat back beside me as the sun finally slipped below the horizon, eyeing the food in his hands warily as though someone had hidden an Ochu tentacle in it. I swear I only did that to Zell once, hell he actually ate the damn thing, how was I to know he was an idiot?

Oh. Right. Stupid question.

“It’s better than the transporter we used on the day of our exam. Zell asking questions all the time…”

“Hyne, no where to nap and Xu’s fugly jaw ratcheting.” I shuddered and nudged him with my elbow. “I was waiting for you to throw up.”

He gave me a glare that made me grin. It was hard to get a rise out of him, true, but it was damned easy to get him to react so long as you knew what you were looking for. People thought he was cold as ice – me included sometimes – but so long as you actually took the time to look you’d be able to see those little signs, those little tell tale signals that he was human, that he did have a heart. “Zell bugs me, but he doesn’t make me vomit.”

“You were turning green,” I smirked. He had been looking a little peaky at the time but that could very well have been down to the fact that I’d damn near taken his head off that morning. I had to admire my handiwork. The scar between his eyes was kind of… right, there. “You never did like boats.”

He took a slow bite of his sandwich, chewing with a scowl. I’d already finished my own and I tried to brush the crumbs of too hard bread off my jacket and to the edge of the tarp – I’d already set encounter none because both of us needed the sleep if we were going to be able to ride in the morning.

Finally he spoke, keeping his voice calm and even deliberately. “I wouldn’t do that on a mission.”

“How was I to know? It was your first one.”

Scoffing softly, he gave me a look that would have reduced a lesser man to quivering jelly. In the light of the fire his eyes were as black as the night sky over our heads but hell, sometimes Leonhart could scare even me. He was just weird. “We’d been training for it for years. I wasn’t going to embarrass myself like that.”

Embarrass yourself, riiiight. That’s why Quistis was throwing up like it was in fashion on the morning of her exam. Maybe I’d never passed because I’d never been nervous. But if that was true, peebee would have failed too. Eh, whatever. “It’s kind of an involuntary thing,” I said, shaking my head.

I watched him pull his jacket tighter around himself, hugging his arms around his chest. I hadn’t seen him even acknowledge the weather for years so him feeling cold was kinda… new. The urge to make him feel better, or at least keep him warm was a new one on me, I hadn’t felt that since I was five and had to listen to him crying in the night. “Move over closer to the fire, I need to get something off the bike.”

He moved closer to the fire, skewering some more of the sausages. It wasn’t like we’d be able to keep them longer than today anyway, so we had to get rid of them somehow and I didn’t much fancy leaving meat out in the open when there would at least be rock Geezards around to make use of it. Meanwhile I dug a fisherman’s sweater – well it had been Rajin’s briefly when we’d passed through timber at Christmas and the daft bastard had been freezing, but I’d washed it half a dozen times since then – and found I’d still got some salt and pepper left.

“I forgot how cold it got without Shiva,” Squall said behind me. There was an edge to his voice that in my years of Squall watching I knew to mean that he missed the fuck out of her, and the big brother in me made a mental note to go back and fuck Xu up some whenever I got the chance. “Be quick about it, these won’t take long.”

So I dropped the sweater on his head. Whatever he chose to call me just after it had landed there, I fortunately did not hear as the sweater muffled everything but the “Seifmph” that started his very brief tirade. After winning the battle of ‘Get this fucking thing off me now’ he balled it up and tossed it at me. “I’m fine.”

Squall may be a hard ass. He may be a little bastard, and he may even be a hero, but if there’s one thing he isn’t, it’s fine. “Hey, you’ll get grease on it. Fuu made that for me. Well… she glared at a guy in a shop until he gave her a discount, anyway.”

“Just eat your dinner.”

“Put it on.”

It’s a testimony to how good my training skills are that he actually did as he was told and put the sweater on. Barely with him a day and I’d already got him acting like a human. I’m just that good. However, the sweater which was on the large side for me buried him. He was still shorter, thinner and Hyne’s balls if he didn’t look like a speck in the sea of wool. “Okay, if it makes you feel better, I think it used to belong to Raijin.”

He picked at it, scowling again. That was the expression I was much more used to. When he was bitching about stuff, he always wound up pouting and looking way too young for being seventeen years old. “I think we could both fit in this.”

“Think of it as our sleeping bag.”

“If I don’t drown in it first,” he muttered. He thought I hadn’t heard but I recognised how he was feeling. I’d sat next to him for two years; I knew when he was wound up, when he was tense, when he was going to snap. And right now, he looked like if I poked him he might explode.

Normally that would have been a challenge. But tonight I just wanted to sleep and I didn’t feel like doing it in a pile of smoking Squall bits and the remains of our single coffee cup. Reaching forward I plucked one of the more well done sausages from the stick by the fire and grinned at him. “Squall. Relax.”

“Relax?” he repeated. It took him a minute to actually figure out what I meant. When he finally worked it out, I’d already finished eating and was wiping my fingers on my jeans for lack of a better napkin. It was a good thing I had finished as when he said “I am relaxed!” I probably would’ve choked.

“Squall, if I bumped you, you would twang like a bow string. And launch that coffee cup to Balamb.”

Squall looked at the coffee cup he was holding. I swear to Hyne he was thinking about trying it just to prove whether I was right or wrong. “Maybe I could hit Xu.”

“I like that image,” I grinned at him. “There she is, relaxing after a hard day of flogging her co-workers bloody by shoving frozen limes up her whazzoo – that’s how she maintains that facial expression – and out of the blue her window shatters and she gets hit in the bean with a cup of camp coffee, which, due to re-entry, should be hot enough to burn through the frigidity and actually make her say ow.”

He looked away. That meant either I’d gotten to him and he was feeling guilty, or I’d gotten to him and he was smiling but didn’t want to admit to it. I suspected it was the second as Xu definitely deserved a cup of camp coffee to the bean. “Alright, so if I’m not relaxed, how do I relax?”

“Whacking off usually does it for me,” I told him and took the mug of coffee from him so I could get a drink.

He blinked at me, all big dark eyes. You know when you tell someone the truth and they still don’t believe you that you have achieved your goal. What that goal is I’m still not entirely sure but I’d done it. In fact, I took a celebratory swig of coffee…

“Myself or you?”

And promptly choked on it.

Now when I’d been at garden and Squall had be the quiet but content little student who sat at my side, glowered at the instructors and regularly did not make masturbation jokes. Either one of those little friends of his had been a bad influence on him or I was going to have to remind Rin that my little brother was not supposed to make whanking jokes. “Okay,” I grinned at him when I could breathe again. “how’s this? You take a deep breath, look around and think… What could go wrong?”

“I could be found by my father, you could pull a scene like last night, we could be eaten by Geezards.”

I shook my head. I’d bought us out here specifically so he wouldn’t have to worry about shit like that. Maybe not the geezard part though. As for the crack about last night, well, I may have gotten pissing people off down to a fine art but he had the rare talent of being able to actually piss me off in return. Fortunately I had logic on my side for the moment. “No, no, your dad won’t find us in the desert. Ditto my fanboys. Geezards could be a problem, but we’ve got Enc-None set up.”

“I’m not whacking off out here where you can hear me, so you’ll have to take me being wound up,” Squall sat back, rubbing his eye with the heel of his hand. He was tired enough to show it, so he would be passing out pretty soon. Little bastard would probably try and outlast me if I didn’t bother to give in and order him to get some rest. Any other time I’d go for the challenge just to see him lose but I was tired too.

It occurred to me that I was living the dream. I had gotten Squall Leonhart to admit he was human and had human urges. If things kept up like this I’d have him calling me his god by the time the week was out. “Oh, you’re noisy?” I asked, not really caring to know about his self relief habits. “I can wander around and sing.”

“I am not having this conversation with you.”

“I’ll go look for Geezards, you can whistle when you’re done.”

“They’ll never find your body out here, Almasy,” he said, glowering at me again. His hand didn’t move for his gunblade so I knew I hadn’t pissed him off too much yet. “Stop giving me a reason to feed the Geezards.”

“Ah, you’d have to catch me.”

“Or wait until you’re relaxing,” he said, his tone threatening. I thoroughly believed he actually would kill me in the middle of some - as Kadowaki termed it so eloquently – self abuse. One, I would be too distracted to hear him sneaking up on me and two, I’m sure as shit he’d get a kick out of the look that would be on my face when he finally finished me. Not that kind of finished, the murdery kind of finished.

“I’ll whistle to let you know when I’m done,” I told him, kicking back and tucking one hand under my head. Now I’d stopped the aches of spending almost an entire day on the bike were catching up with me. My shoulders complained about keeping the same position for so long and I was rethinking my decision to spend the next night in the desert, too. Hell I don’t think my back could take two nights in the desert running. Besides, Squall still looked like crap. A bed and somewhere warm again would probably do him the world of good.

“Just wait til I’m asleep.”

I grinned at him. “I’m doing it right now,” I said – a base lie but still enough to make him look down at my crotch. I always knew the little bastard was kinky. I laughed and smacked his arm. For looking.

He growled at me and folded his arms over his chest like a big kid. Most everything he does sooner or later reminds me of a kid, maybe because he was so incredibly fucked up. Cid, Edea, hell even garden did a number on him. It’d been my job to toughen him up. “Bastard.”

“Eat your dinner,” I ordered him, nodding to the remaining sausage at the fireside. Perhaps masturbation jokes were highly inappropriate when we were eating overcooked wieners. “Or you’ll be having it again for breakfast.”

“I don’t eat breakfast.”

I could already see things were going to get worse before they got better. “Okay, high tea.”

“Whatever,” he said, reaching for his sausage and unskewering it.

“Look, I love fighting with you,” I told him in an attempt to be reasonable. “But even I can’t do it twenty four – seven. Let’s limit the fights to the daylight hours only, okay? And not before eight for any reason.”

He frowned, looking thoughtful as he broke the meat into smaller pieces. I knew Squall was going to add his own stipulations to my proposal, just to make himself feel like he’d had a hand in our truce. Still, he made me wait until he’d eaten it before he answered.

“Can we make it not before the first cup of coffee?”

“That’s a given,” I grinned. Until I’d gotten the proper balance of caffeine to blood back into my veins, I was just cranky. The rest of the day I was quite happy to be a bastard of my own accord, but that first hour before I fed my addiction I was not at my best. It feels so hollow to snark at people without it being of your own accord.

“I’d shake your hand, but I know where it’s been.”

“Only with the things I love,” I nudged him on the chin and he pulled a face like a kitten getting wet. Like anyone was ever going to take him seriously when he could look like that.

“Just yourself and your weapon, naturally,” he said. Then he took one look at my grin and hastily added “Your gunblade.”

“Naturally.”

We were quiet for a while. Squall should never be permitted to be quiet for long as that fucked up little brain of his starts churning over information and drawing completely the wrong conclusions. I knew this, and yet I let him do it. Maybe I’m a sucker for an argument even despite our new and shiny rule that was going to be ignored as much as the garden regulations were. “Was it just for the money?” he asked finally, rubbing his eyes.

He’d lost me. I thought we were still joking about choking the chicken. Which was possibly my favourite slang for self love as it had often made Zell blush and slip when doing one of his little cheerleader routines. “If you could get paid for whacking off, no teenage boy would ever need another job.”

“Picking me up at the station, Seifer.”

I made the mistake of letting him get to me. I should have known that It was Squall’s fucked up side talking, and that he really couldn’t stand letting us sleep without at least one more argument. I’d seen enough proof of that before when we’d been on training missions together. “If it were just for the money,” I hissed, angry that he thought so little of me. “I’d turn your ass in for the huge Hyne be damned reward, dumb shit.”

“Abide by your own rule,” he told me, as if I’d been the one to start this stupid line of conversation. That was my other mistake, expecting conversation from Squall I know three words and all of them are whatever Leonhart. “No arguments.”

“Well what kind of fucking question is that?” I poked at the fire, pissed that he’d asked, pissed that I’d gotten pissed and pissed that I couldn’t smack the little bastard without breaking my rule again or hurting the little fuck. If he hadn’t looked so different to the kid I’d left back in Balamb a few months before, I’d have been wrestling with him and trying to beat the crap out of him for even deigning to think something so dumb. It made me think back to the war too, memories I’d really rather have left buried.

“I don’t know. Just… curiosity I guess.”

“No, it was just… stupid. We’ve known each other since we were babies.”

“Yeah,” he said, giving me this little smile that made me think maybe he wasn’t such a bastard after all. It was only small, but he was smiling. He was actually deigning to show me some human emotion… well I couldn’t really keep myself angry anyway. “And we’ve fought since we were at Garden.”

“So? It’s easier to fight when we are together.”

Giving me a look that I translated to ‘dear Hyne, you’re right!’ just for the sake of my own sanity and his remaining unbeaten and without black eyes, Squall shrugged. “We had better keep our big fights for when we don’t have an audience. Neither one of us wants to draw attention to ourselves.”

“We’ll be like bread and butter in public,” I told him. Just sharply enough to make it sound like he didn’t have a choice which really, he didn’t. Still, I didn’t really expect him to just go along with it as easy as he did.

“You be butter.”

“And spread?” I asked. He nodded. “Just for that, I will.”

For a second there, he looked honestly surprised. It was almost cute that he thought he really knew me well enough to judge me. Both of us had changed since that morning months back when we’d exchanged scars. Felt like years before every time I looked at him. “You? Following an order?”

“I really prefer to think of it as a suggestion,” I nodded, barely resisting the urge to wink at him. And then, I spread. I yawned, stretched and flopped down on the tarpaulin, dragging him down with me and deliberately took up as much space as I could, just so he’d have to stay closer to the fire.

“Where are we going?”

Squall’s bright, but the obvious defeats him. “…To bed.”

“I meant tomorrow,” Squall muttered, rolling onto his side to face the fire. At least he was starting to understand the whole I don’t want to argue after dark thing, or he would have kept facing me so we could keep arguing. Still he had to have a brain somewhere in that pretty head of his that actually did work. I suppose. He’d beaten me after all.

“Well, since it took all day to get here, going back the way we came would be futile. And there’s only one road. Eventually the road will end, and there will be a big body of water. We’ll go north or south along the coast until we decide to go some place else. Why, did you have a destination in mind?”

“I’m not used to not having somewhere to go,” he said. I knew that feeling well, I’d been lost when I’d first started out on my own, but it was weird to hear someone else admit to it.

Unfolding the blankets, I moved as close to him as I could so we could share. “The orphanage and the lighthouse. By the first snow.”

He turned his head to look at me when I covered him, clutching at the blankets with one hand. It was weird seeing him cold, he’d had Shiva for so long that I wondered how he’d been able to take her being removed from him. I’d always had a close bond with Ifrit as well as my other GF Helios, and losing one had been… difficult. At least I’d had Helios to fall back on, Squall had nothing. “We have a while then.”

“We can do whatever we want. That’s the point of running away from home, isn’t it?” I wanted to touch his hair. It was half hanging in his eyes and I couldn’t really see him, but I couldn’t afford to be too personal. It’d make him pull away even if we had known each other forever. As soon as he passed out, I’d curl up against his back so I could keep him warm.

“First time I’ve tried it.”

“You used to do it all the time when you were little.”

I could almost see him remembering. Back when we were both tiny, when he’d been so desperate to find Sis that he’d have done anything. I’d hated her on more than one occasion because she was more special to him than I was. Still, I’d been the one he’d come to for the important things in life. “I was looking for Elle,” he said, his voice distant.

“You crawled up into the postman’s truck one time. Cid and Matron were out on the beach, freaking. You were nearly to the docks before he noticed you and had to turn around,” I’d admired him that day. I thought he was brave to make it that far, even if I wasn’t stupid enough to follow him except when I had to bring him back when stuff went wrong. More than once I’d had to drag him back, his chubby little hand in mine, telling him what an idiot he was.

Then I’d take the blame and the scolding from Matron.

“I was a little monster. No wonder no one wanted me.”

He was confused. I remember Ma Dincht nearly took him with her the first time she turned up. Whenever someone tried to talk to him he’d hide behind me or out in the flower fields, especially after Sis left, and I wouldn’t go anywhere without him – I’d promised her I would stay with him. Should’ve remembered that when Ultimecia dragged me off. “You were great. And people wanted you, but you would freak and hide.”

He was quiet for a while again, not looking at me but through me, his thoughts elsewhere. “I didn’t want to leave you like Sis left us.”

Maybe there was a hope for his memories after all. “I know, but no one wanted me.” I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Not that I’d wanted to go with any of the people who’d come to stare at us like an exhibit in the zoo, why go with them when I had a great career as a knight ahead of me. If only I’d known.

“Someone did.”

I lifted myself on my elbow so I could look at him properly. He looked tired. He looked like a lost kid and for a second I wondered if maybe I should hand him over to his dad just so he wouldn’t be lost again. But Squall would just run away again and then there’d be no one to look after him this time. “He couldn’t support me in the manner to which I’d grown accustomed. At least, not when he was eighteen months old.”

He gave me a tired smile. It’d take some time to get used to him doing that. “He was older when he worked it out. You saved him from having to play house with Selphie.”

“Irvine’s job. Then, as it is now. Kismet.”

Smiling again, he yawned and curled back up on his side with the blankets pulled right up to his chin. “Goodnight, Seifer.”

“Goodnight, squirt.”

Shifting his arm like he was going to elbow me in the stomach for calling him squirt again, he stopped. “I’ll hit you for that one in the morning.”

I knew he was only arguing for the sake of it, that he argued to keep himself awake. His voice was softening, his hand relaxing on the blanket, it wouldn’t be long before he was out cold. “Just so long as it’s after coffee,” I told him and curled up against his back.

“During.”

“No,” I said as though I was talking to a kid. He just tempted me into it so he could wake up and bitch again, I knew that but still I wanted to do it so damned much. “After. Your rule, remember?”

“You break yours, I can break mine.”

The victor of the second sorceress war, Mister I eat trees and shit matches for breakfast acts like a kid when he’s tired. I wondered if those papers in Esthar knew what a child he could be. But then I knew they’d only sweeten any article to stay on his dad’s good side, there are advantages to being the son of the President. There’d have to be. “It’s dark. Don’t argue with me.”

Then he was asleep. I stayed awake a while longer just so I could keep an eye out for Geezards. I had Enc-None set up but I was nervous about them getting near the bike. The fire would keep them away, I hoped, and the cold. Then I was out too, one arm wrapped around Squall’s waist to keep him close to me, just so we could share body warmth.


	5. Chapter Four

Chapter Four.  
“To like and dislike the same things, that is indeed true friendship.”  
Sallust

 

March 19th

"Hyne be-damned piece of shit."

I awoke to the sound of Seifer bitching. It was almost like being home at Balamb, waking up to the sound of his almost inane rantings and ramblings. In fact, for a second I wondered what he'd done to knock me out this time.

However, the ground was too hard even for one of Kadowaki's infirmary beds and the air lacked the too clean smell of disinfectant and the irritating scent of the flowers that she kept on her desk week in and week out. I remembered that I wasn't still in Balamb; more to the point, I remembered I was with Seifer out in the Galbadian desert. Another day I'd stayed out of Esthar's clutches and away from the Hyne damned idiot who thought he was my father. Despite the pounding in the back of my skull, I permitted myself a moment of smugness before I sat up to growl at Seifer. "Keep it down."

"Squall," he replied in the calmest manner Seifer could possibly manage. He stood over his bike, one hand clenched in a fist at his side and the other on the handlebars as though he was about to hit it. "Since we'll be walking, you should get up now while it's still cool."

With my head feeling like my brain was attempting to implode, I doubted I'd be able to make it far. "Walking? What, why?"

"Half the oil dripped out overnight. I don't know if I have enough to get us and this piece of shit to the next town."

I looked at him as though he'd just told me Selphie had taken to wearing black and writing bad poetry. We were a good forty miles from anywhere with pretty meagre supplies for a trip like that. My head was killing me and I knew I had no chance of making it anywhere near that far in a week, let alone a day. Unless my brain stopped trying to break out of my skull with a pick axe. "We're miles from anywhere..."

"Yes, Leonhart," he gestured wildly over the desert, empty of life except for the odd cactus - not even rock geezards or cactaurs scuttled about in the red sand. "I can see that the magical city of Brigadoon has faded away once again."

Whatever he was talking about was lost on me. I had no head for those movies and legends he'd poured over when we were kids, but then I didn't have much of a head for anything any more. It didn't bother me, I'd just nod and not smile any time the others started reminiscing and find something else to do. We were too young to mourn what little childhoods we'd had, and there was no way of getting it back. "Don't take it out on me, just because your bike is a pile of junk."

"Sorry, Princess," Seifer shrugged and started angrily digging through one of his packs while I debated throwing a rock at him and stealing the bike. Not very heroic, but heroes aren't supposed to go running away from their reward, are they?

By the time he had found out a tool kit, wrapped in an oilskin that was probably older than Hyne itself, and a can of oil, I was dragging myself to my feet - much to the disappointment of my back. Sleeping in the D-district torture device had been more comfortable than the desert sands for one night, I was sure. "Why haven't you gotten it fixed yet?"

"The Geezards charge too much," Seifer said, gesturing at the wide open nothing of the Galbadian desert. I should have known he'd give me one of his sarcastic responses. How he could think clearly enough to be snide before coffee I had no idea; he obviously wasn't as far gone as I was. For a second, I half expected a geezard with an oil stained shirt and a baseball cap to roll up with a wrench in it's claws. That's when I realised I'd spent too much time around Selphie.

Still, I wasn't in the mood for his bitching, whether the motorcycle deserved it or not. I willed my back to return to one piece and took the tool kit from him before he hurt the poor bike even more. Knowing his talent with mechanical, it would shortly be a mushroom cloud of smoke and a black stain on the sand. I may not have wanted to walk to the next town, but I didn't want to be propelled there by explosion, either. "You've passed through towns."

"It hasn't leaked this much in ages - just a little drip," Seifer eyed me critically. "Maybe it was the extra weight or we ran over something."

"You," I poked him with a socket spanner, "were driving."

He rubbed his shoulder where I'd jabbed him as though he were mortally wounded. I hadn't even poked him hard enough to stain his clothes. "I know! I'm trying to think."

“I don't remember anything," I shrugged. That wasn't entirely surprising.

"Well, it's leaking like an overfull diaper now."

Seifer always came up with the most interesting metaphors. He was still angry, about thirty seconds away from kicking the bike if I knew him, so I pushed him away. "Calm down before you blow something too."

"Easy for you to say," he muttered, wearing one of his little sullen looks, but at least he gave me room to crouch beside the bike. It was the same oil leak I'd seen that first night - I guessed the seal had either blown or it had slipped. I was desperately hoping for the latter as I started loosening the part, and from the way Seifer was hovering over my shoulder, he was as well.

"At least I'm not telling you to relax."

It took him a second to realise what I was referring to, so at least I didn't feel too bad about taking a while to wake up. When it finally clicked, he grinned at me and asked "How can you think of sex at a time like this?"

That insignificant little crush I'd had on him flared into life as soon as he said it. Suddenly it felt like my cheeks were on fire, I was blushing like an idiot. At least without Shiva in my head I wouldn't have anyone making pithy little comments.

Hyne, I missed her.

"Whatever," I muttered, staring intently at the seal. If I could just ignore the crush for a while, it would be okay. I didn't know how long I was going to be acting like a lovesick schoolgirl and blushing over every little thing he said but it couldn't be too long - I'd been through this before and I'd managed to push it aside. This time would be just the same as long as he didn't keep cracking jokes like that.

"I never saw you tinkering with the cars and stuff at Garden... do you know what you're doing?"

While I liked to drive, I hadn't been in the garage at garden in years - I had been assigned a week's detention helping out in there when I was fourteen for fighting with Seifer. He'd gotten KP and I'd been assigned to work in the garage because it was on the other side of the Garden to where Seifer had been stationed. Garden took a while to figure out that distance wouldn't stop us fighting. "No, I'm going to blow us both up."

"Since our other choice is a forty mile hike through the desert," he paused for effect, rubbing his chin in thought. "Go ahead."

"Are you determined to be an audience or make yourself useful and make coffee?"

I heard the slap of his palm hitting his forehead. "Hyne!" Seifer exclaimed, turning on his heels and strutting dramatically back to the fire we'd had the previous night. "I must make coffee! For then we can fight properly."

This is what I get a crush on when I concede to my hormones? Hyne help me, I had impeccable taste.

"Good boy," I said, ignoring him as much as I could. As long as I kept my head down, and he didn't ask too many questions about why I was so red, I'd get through this just fine.

The rubber seal was already starting to fail. The oil had eaten away at it on one side so I turned it and hoped to Hyne it would at least get us to the next town. It was probably a long shot but it would do. While I was getting covered in oil, Seifer made coffee and set the cup down by my side. I took the time to wipe my hands before I picked it up just so I wouldn't have to put up with more grumbling.

It was drinkable.

No... it wasn't just drinkable. It was actually good. Probably the best coffee I'd had in weeks, even if it was made the way he liked it. So maybe my crush was a little warranted. "I think I'm still dreaming."

He crouched down beside me to peer at the bike again, misinterpreting my sarcasm. "Why is that?"

"This is actually drinkable."

"Practice, my man," he clapped me on the shoulder hard enough to knock me forwards and almost have me spill the coffee. It's a testament to my addiction that not a single drop hit the floor. "Practice."

I took another deep drink and sighed. That settled it, until we parted ways, Seifer was making the coffee. So it might not have been as strong as the stuff that I made, but it was warm and wet and did a little to sate the constant nagging pain in the back of my head. Now all I needed was a few painkillers and I might actually be able to pull off human for a few hours. "Arrogance."

"And a pinch of salt."

"Whatever," I shrugged and handed him the mug back. Even if I did want to finish it, I couldn't without at least giving him the opportunity to take a swig. To my disappointment, he did take it and finished the entire thing, but at least he went back to make another mug. "You need new seals, that's why it's leaking. If we fill it up and head for the next town, we might make it, but there's nothing else I can do without those."

"Okay," Seifer offered me another cup of nectar. "You are lighter, will it change the stresses if you drive and I sit in the back?"

"Like I was going to let you torture it more by driving?" I asked about three seconds before I realised that I was going to have him rubbing up against my ass for forty miles. Hyne, Leonhart, what are you getting yourself into? At least it was better than the other way around, he wouldn't notice any 'reactions' on my part with me in front. Sometimes I really hated being seventeen.

"Hey, I don't have to give you good coffee."

I threatened him with a particularly oily spanner. "I'm the only one of us who's vaguely mechanical."

"And I'm the only one who can cook," Seifer grinned, leaning as close to me as he could. It took every bit of strength I had not to draw back from him because I knew that he'd chase me and tease me and Hyne only knew what else. Even if we had been sleeping out in front of the fire all night, he smelt good. Wood smoke and his aftershave - something hot like cinnamon. Travelling with him was beginning to feel like a very bad idea. "Damn, let's get married."

"I'll pass. I have my sights set higher."

"Well, I wanted a rich broad with a chocolate factory myself," he rolled to his feet. Taking the mug back from me, Seifer finished the drink for the second time and rinsed it out with a little water before packing it away. I tried to focus on putting the oil line back into place, but I still managed to get it the wrong way around the first time. Fortunately Seifer didn't notice and if he'd done it himself he would have somehow managed to get it inside out.

"We're back to whatever. Pack up fast, we need to get to town as soon as we can - just pray they have the right parts."

It didn't take long. Fortunately I managed to sneak a couple of aspirin while he was stuffing his gear back into the saddlebags and I swallowed them dry. Human really was plausible by the time the town was in sight, but unfortunately it was pissed off human as the oil pressure gauge had been showing way too high the entire way. Seifer had been clinging to me all the way there too, criticizing my driving through prayer and cursing.

Hyne help him if I ever really opened her up.

"How long as it been leaking?" I asked, turning my head just a little. It made his cheek press against mine just for an instant and I swore to myself that as soon as we found a shower, I was going to commune with Shiva – as the guys at garden had called the ice cold showers that we were treated to if we didn't get to them at just the right time.

"Ever since I got it, but not so much lately. I usually have to put oil in every couple hundred miles."

Personally I thought it was a lousy design, and it had to have been deteriorating for a while but there was only one thing that had changed to make it suddenly give up the ghost. Me. "It must have been the extra weight."

"You don't weigh much more than a week's groceries, Squall."

He had a point. I hadn't been myself since the start of January after all but that wasn't my fault. Even if I had run away from Esthar, I sure as hell felt like I was doing better since I'd left the city than while I'd been stuck with my father and the rest of his entourage. "So how else would you explain it?" I asked, slowing down. The needle on the oil pressure gauge was starting to dip and then head back up, I was afraid something worse was going to happen and I didn't feel up to skidding down the tarmac without my leathers.

Seifer shrugged, looking over my shoulder to see what I was tutting at. I wasn't sure if he could see the gauge or if it was just a matter of him not understanding it like I did. Either way, I was relieved that he didn't panic or comment, and that he wasn't driving. "I'm just saying, it was going to bust sooner or later anyway."

"Probably, but it might have sped it up."

"At least you know what's wrong," he said, patting my leg. "Last time I let a yokel poke at it, he told me I needed a sixty-k gil new bike."

The ability of mechanics to spot a target was something that never ceased to amaze me. If I ever went back to garden I'd make it a policy to send all forward scouts to the SeeD garage for a year of training to take advantage of the fact. "You don't need a new bike," I told him, even though later I was sure to be of the opinion it probably would have been better to put the old machine he called his out of it's misery like a lame chocobo. "You need a couple of five gil seals and an oil change."

"I like your solution a lot better."

There was something in his voice that sent a chill down my spine. My first thought was not a good one. "Not that kind of oil change!" I exclaimed, and Seifer started laughing so hard I was afraid he'd fall off the bike. I'd heard Irvine call oral sex an oil change, but I really hadn't meant it that way. Hyne, I'd not even been around him three full days and everything was coming back to sex. "Oh Hyne, forget it."

"I was being sincere, you know. I was only thinking of the standard kind of lube and oil," Seifer offered. If he hadn't still been laughing, he might have actually convinced me.

As I pulled into the town, I spotted the garage. It had only taken me forty miles and almost an hour to notice that it was starting to get warm and that I was still wearing Seifer's huge sweater. Obviously I hadn't had enough coffee and I felt like an idiot for not realising earlier so when I pulled over, I fought my way out of the shapeless thing. "Why didn't you tell me I was still wearing your sweater?"

"I figured you were cold," he took it from me and stuffed it in a saddlebag while I pulled my jacket back on.

"I'm used to being cold."

When I turned off the engine, he climbed off the bike first, stretching with his arms over his head. "Why get used to being uncomfortable?"

Of course he didn't know what it was like to junction Shiva. Why I had been able to walk through the Galbadian desert unfazed while wearing full leathers. Why I had been able to walk through the wastes of the Trabian tundra. In decades, I'd been the only one Shiva had accepted and the only one she'd permitted to actually summon her regularly, so I was the only one who knew what she felt like when she wanted to be with you. It hurt to think of her; I hoped Xu hadn't done anything to hurt her, even if any action against the Guardian Forces paled into insignificance just through the sheer length of their life. I hated to think of her being hurt because of her connection to me. "Shiva."

He looked confused, scratching his head. "I thought you didn't feel the cold?"

"Don't feel warm either. Let's go see if they have the seal."

Then, Seifer did it. I was not superstitious by a long shot but he said the words that always seemed to curse the events that followed no matter how innocently they had been uttered or how good things had been before hand. "Sure, how bad can it be?"

"Now you're asking for it."

"The story of my life," he grinned at me. "At least there's a grocery, so we can get supplies."


	6. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happy Birthday Thirteenthesia. 
> 
> In this chapter, Squall proves he's more manly than Seifer. Fixing the bike, at least.

Chapter Five

“Maintenance is as much art as it is science.”   
Author Unknown

 

March 20th

I woke first. Seifer was still curled up on his side, snoring faintly.

Mornings in the desert were as glorious as the evenings. The sun rose in a sky painted orange, red and gold, the first touch of light sending all sorts of creatures skittering back to their lairs to avoid the heat of the day. I could hardly say I blamed them – if I could have done it too I would. The daylight bought heat – and without Shiva I hated the heat. I'd hated it even when she'd been with me but at least she'd protected me from the worst of it.

Regardless of how much I disliked it out here in the desert, I had to admire it. There was something peaceful about it all, knowing we were the only people for miles. Not only that but, as the orange faded to the first blues and pastel coloured clouds, it was beautiful. I hadn't had time to appreciate that during the war.

I busied myself first making coffee to wake up properly – even if it was already starting to get too warm I still needed my coffee to breathe, let alone think most days.

After that, I found our very basic tool kit out of one of the travel bags, along with the seals I'd managed to pick up to fix his bike before Seifer had nagged me into getting my own helmet for the ride, which in turn was before we’d had the argument about me having to sell my earring to get the damn helmet which had been his idea in the first place.

I had to stop letting Seifer talk to anyone who knew about bikes, cars, or engines in general. There was some sort of aura of gullible about him that we couldn’t fix with a remedy. Unfortunately. The oil filter wasn't the best design, it needed a few thicker seals and someone to keep an eye on it, not fixing by replacing the rest of the bike. As long as I could keep on top of it, there'd be no problems. Good thing I'd stayed with him, I don't know what he'd do without me.

So I was sipping coffee and making sure our ride wasn't about to leave us stranded in the middle of nowhere when I heard Seifer's voice behind me. “Tell me that isn't the coffee you're using.”

I must have been distracted if I hadn't even heard him approach. “Coffee is too precious to use on the bike,” I shrugged. The bike was pretty easy to take apart, I didn't need to do much to get the filter isolated and change the seals, so I was almost done anyway, but Seifer had a habit of being a distraction.

“I like your logic. What in Hyne's holy cracker are you doing, then?”

Seifer always had the best turns of phrase. I was almost too used to them, I'd heard them so many times over the years but occasionally one could make me muffle a snicker. I think my favourite was 'Hyne on a pogo stick'. “You can't argue,” I told him. Best that I cover my bases before we even started. “You haven't had coffee yet.”

“Asking a question is not arguing,” Seifer crouched down to check out what I was doing, still bleary eyed and struggling enough to maintain balance that he had to rest a hand on the sand, too. He really hadn't been awake very long if he was still that unsteady, so I felt better about not hearing him. “It is opening a dialogue, the opposite to arguing. Arguing would sound more like 'What in Hyne's holy cracker are you doing, Asshole?' “

Okay – maybe he was a little more with it than I'd estimated.

I wiped down the excess oil and set the seal in place. “What does it look like I'm doing?”

“Honestly? It looks like you are wiping the dregs of the coffee pot from that last road stop all over with a jar opener.”

“I,” I gestured at myself with a spanner, “am fixing your bike.” I resisted the urge to tap him on the head however gently with the tool I was holding. No, Seifer was still without coffee. I couldn't start fights until he had a cup, according to the rules. As though the rules were so vital.

“Why didn't you tell me you could do that?” He made his little exasperated with Squall sound. Seifer made that sound a lot, I'd noticed. Even if he didn't know what he was doing and if I didn't care. Most of the time I gave him a pretty good reason to.

“You didn't ask,” I said as I started to reattach things to the bike so we could get moving. The sun was already starting to make me itch for a cooler, safer space to discuss things, if that was what Seifer was in the mood for today, and we weren't going anywhere with the bike in pieces.

“Because I didn't know you could do that. What am I supposed to do, ask about everything in Hyne's bustling world? How about I start alphabetically? Say Leonhart, can you do acupuncture? Beading? Calligraphy?”

I scratched an itch on my chin with the mostly clean end of the spanner I'd been using, attempting to appear thoughtful. “I can do acupuncture, but my needle is really big and blue. Oh, and it requires pulse ammunition.”

“It's supposed to cure pain, not cause great whopping wounds, dumbass.”

“Explains why I failed that class then, doesn't it?” I shrugged. Seifer, to my surprise, laughed. He also, not to my surprise, snagged my barely touched second cup of coffee and drank it. Oh good, we could argue now so I could stop my piss poor attempt to tiptoe around him. “Anyway, it was your fault I ended up working in the garage. We fought too much when I was on KP with you so they sent me to the other end of garden. Remember?”

Come to think of it, we'd still managed to fight when I was in the garage. We were just that good.

“Hey, it could have been worse. You could have been a nurse's aid, or shovelling grat poop. So buck up.”

“As it is, I am fixing your bike. Hopefully this will help with the oil leak. I'll keep checking it so we don't have another event like the other morning,” I wiped off the spanner I'd been using and then my hands with a rag I'd dug out earlier.

“Just because you can be useful doesn't mean you won't be riding bitch today,” he said, haughtily. I think he was a little pissed that I could do things like this and he couldn't. He hated when I could do anything better than he could.

“Of course it does.”

He gave me a hard look. “I think not.”

“I took your keys so I could test it,” I said. Maybe I was a little smug. Sometimes I deserved to be a little smug, so sue me.

“Hyne, you are an asshole,” he shook his head and stood up, gathering our bags and dumping them on the back of the bike now that it was done.

“I must have caught it from you.”

“Don't say I never gave you anything then.”

“Whatever.”

I gave him a hand with the clearing up, packing away the rest of our things. I still wasn't sure why Seifer got to me like he did, or why he wanted to tease me, argue with me and all the other things that had nearly got us killed or expelled a few times when we'd been at garden. Discounting my less than rival like feelings and thoughts about him half the time, I guess it could have just been that we knew each other better than most. Whatever. It didn't matter all that much.

“Okay,” he said when we had everything settled back on the bike and our tracks covered as best we could – we didn't have the luxury of leaving too much evidence, even if it was hard to follow a trail out here in the desert. “Let's see if this miracle of yours will get us to the next town.”

I, being in one of my most logical and fair moods, settled on the bike and looked at him. “Come on then, Bitch.”

He growled something that was probably unrepeatable and less than pleasant, and swatted my ass before he settled behind me.

“That's even bitchier.”

“I have not yet begun to bitch, Slim.”

“Whatever,” I shrugged and started the engine.

Everything sounded fine. Too fine, I was almost worried until the needle on the oil pressure gauge warbled up to a decent position, and held itself there. I paced the bike back to the road gently, appreciating that the surface was not the best for a speedy start, but as soon as I hit tarmac, I gunned the engine.

Seifer tightened his arms around me, holding on almost enough to crush the breath from my lungs. I took that as permission and opened her up, more than likely leaving a little bit of rubber evidence on the road in my wake.

“Hyneonacrackeryouidjit!” Seifer yelled behind me. It must have been loud for me to hear it over the engine and the wind noise.

“Now that is bitching,” I called back to him.

I could just hear him laugh over the noise.

I kept up a fair pace as long as I could but, to my disappointment, whatever had tired me out and made me feel less than my usual self over the previous weeks was ever at hand, and I didn't want to risk something dumb happening while I was in control of the bike. Seifer would never be bitch again if that was the case. I slowed down when it was starting to get too much for me. To my shame, I was even starting to tremble, I'd held the position too long for my own good.

We'd been out for a few hours when Seifer nudged me. “Hey, pull over! I'm getting a weird vibe.”

I slowed reluctantly, and pulled over at the side of the road when I saw somewhere suitable. Shade out here was at a premium and it was a good idea to stop when we saw it, rather than risk waiting a little longer and end up riding further and further when we were already tired. As soon as I stopped, Seifer slid off the bike and stretched.

“Also,” he said, bending at an odd angle to stretch his back, “my ass is numb.”

I resisted the urge to either tell him that he was all ass or that I could help him rub it better. Instead, I turned off the engine and dug out one of our bottles of water to take a long drink. I'd not even noticed how much I needed it until the first sip of water hit the back of my dry throat and I felt ridiculously better. Seifer came back from a very brief walk around the little shady patch we'd found to take the bottle from me when I'd finish, and drink the rest of it.

I missed green, oddly. Everything out in the desert was just shades of red, grey and brown, the odd cactaur didn't really count as they were so few and far between in this place that I think we'd barely seen a handful. When we made it to the small towns, they were often just as bad as the rest of the long winding roads, although rarely we struck lucky and there would be more plants and somehow the air would feel fresher.

“How's the oil gauge, are we good?” Seifer asked.

I knew he trusted me, somewhere. He just didn't trust the bike. “Yeah,” I said. It had barely wavered in the time we'd been on the road and, when I leant over to check his usual leak, there was no evidence of any thing untoward at all. “No leaks yet, either.”

“You the man then,” he grinned at me and waved in the direction we'd been heading. “See that butte there? That's our destination.”

I looked the way he was pointing. It wasn't like there was anywhere else to really go, the black tarmac road crawled like a snake over the rolling hills directly to the butte and around the base of it before it disappeared out of sight again. “Right.”

“You want to rest?”

“I'm fine,” I grumbled, settling in a more comfortable position. “I was just worried about pushing it too hard for too long when I've only just repaired it.”

“Yeah, there was a funny vibe towards the end there. Might be from the tires since you must have left an inch of rubber back at our camp.”

“You got to me.” As though there were times when he didn't get to me. No one could read me like him, no one could push my buttons like him. Sometimes I thought I had to be insane to be travelling with him after all the things we'd been through, then I remembered that I'd never pretended to be sane. So fuck it. Just give in and go with the flow.

“You can't run away, you know. I'm right behind you.”

“I thought you might fall off.”

“That's gratitude!” he punched me on the shoulder and huffed at me. “Asshole.”

We spent so much of our time together arguing or bitching at each other that we barely knew how to be civil. Not a day went by that we wouldn't find something to argue over, even if it was so brief it only lasted a matter of minutes, or if it was so intense that we reached for our gunblades. To be honest, I was surprised we hadn't managed to damage ourselves more thoroughly. Must try harder. “You asked for it.”

“Just for that, I'm driving,” he said, putting his hands on his hips and giving me the 'I'm getting ready to argue with you whether you like it or not' look. I was hot, aching and debating whether I could get my blade out without getting off the bike.

“I still have the keys,” I reminded him.

“So hand them over.”

“No way.”

“What, you like the feel of bugs in your teeth?”

“No. I really like knowing that you're stuck riding bitch, though.”

“Hyne, you are such a brat. Hand over the damn keys.”

I'd fixed the damn thing, I'd worked on it while he snored and I'd been the one to save him thousands of gil he would have otherwise foolishly spent on a new bike - if he had it - when a few five gil seals would prevent the problem. Why the hell shouldn't I be the one to drive? I slid off the bike too and took the keys with me.

“What, are we going to duel for them? Just give me the hyne bedammned keys, Squall. Hyne, you are worse than a feisty drunk.”

Fine, if that's what he wanted. I tossed the keys to him and started to walk the way we were heading. I shoved my hands in my pockets and ignored Seifer as best as I could given that Seifer really hated to be ignored.

“What is this?” he called after me when he worked out that I wasn't about to come back.

“Time for me to think without wanting to kill you.”

“Look, I don't have until you are old and grey. For one thing, we blonds sunburn easily,” he lied. Seifer didn't sunburn – I did. Seifer just got more golden and more handsome and Seifer did everything better than me. Except win wars. Okay – I really had him beaten there. Seifer bought the bike up beside me, just walking it without switching the engine on. “Get on. This is nuts.”

I ignored him.

“Hyne on a cracker, I forgot what a stubborn little prick you could be.”

“And I forgot what a persistent bastard you were, GF's screw with all our memories.”

“I'm not in the wrong here,” Seifer flailed a hand trying to indicate something that I didn't understand and didn't particularly want to understand. “It's my bike, Hyne! And you can't walk all the way to Sweet Water.”

I'd never indicated that I did want to walk all the way to Sweet Water. All I wanted was a few minutes alone to get over my anger and to ignore him. A few minutes of Seifer not existing in my field of vision, but of course, Seifer hated the very idea of not being the centre of my attention all the time when I was around. That was why he poked and prodded and teased me until I lost my temper and jumped him or started yelling back. I'd give my life to protect him, sure, but sometimes I really just wanted to smack him with something hard and quite possibly pointy. “I'm not walking all the way.”

“How far are you walking, then?”

“As far as I want to,” I replied, shrugging and trying to ignore him. It really didn't work.

Seifer exploded into a flurry of curses that would have made a sailor blush, and somewhere in the middle was my favourite ‘Holy hopping half assed Hyne on a pogo stick'. I was just wondering how Hyne, being split in two, would manage to maintain any sort of balance on a pogo stick but then Seifer found some semblance of coherence again. “Hyne dammit! Okay. Fine! I'll walk too. Stubborn little ass. Little ass? You are the biggest ass in the world!”

If it had been any other time, I might have laughed. However, him reacting like that meant that I'd won. It was so rare that I wanted to celebrate, I wanted to mark the occasion on a calendar. But I had to keep it all inside because otherwise Seifer would know I'd won and that would start the whole thing off again.

Seifer stopped suddenly. I slowed, but kept walking.

“Why the fuck are we doing this again?”

“Because we like arguing,” I said.

“I'm multi talented. I can argue and drive. Get on the damn bike.”

If I hadn't felt so shaky, if I hadn't already been tired before we'd stopped, I would have kept walking. However, I'd won, and that meant that I could take a rest from the arguing especially. Seifer just wouldn't know that. I stopped and waited for him to bring the bike to me.

“At last!” he exclaimed and held it still for me to climb on behind him and wrap my arms around him. He didn't have as much of a love for speed as I did but I had to hold on anyway – I was already starting to feel a little dizzy. I wanted that cool and dark place I'd longed for before we'd set off. “Good sense prevails. I'll even let you take over in a bit, but I needed to sit in another position a while or my ass was going to ossify.”

“You're entirely assified already.”

“Good thing I can't reach you,” he said over his shoulder as he started the bike.

“Just drive, Ass,” I got as comfortable as I could manage with being on the bike, tucking my legs in and resting my head against his back as best I could. It was easier to keep ducked down behind him, and as warm as he was, and as hot as the day had become, I didn’t mind holding on to him. The engine burbled beneath us, sounding a lot happier than it had the first night - though it could have been my imagination. 

“I am done being reasonable with you, brat,” he shot back. I could almost hear him rolling his eyes and I resisted telling him that I knew he’d rolled his eyes and pointing out that he was starting to turn into me.

“When were you reasonable? I think I blinked and missed it.”

“Tough, it's your loss,” Seifer gestured, pacing the bike a few more steps before he slowly pulled onto the road. Maybe he was testing to see if my fix was still working, it’d just be perfect for him to find it wasn’t and have a reason to feel like the bigger man again.

“Damn. I can't imagine you reasonable. Must have been quite a sight.”

“Yeah, I shot sunshine out of my ass, angels sang and rocks danced with joy at the very beauty of it all. And you missed it, loser.”

I sighed. Loudly. Hopefully loudly enough for him to hear through the helmet. “All two seconds of it. Oh well.”

“How long do you think rocks can dance?”

“Just shut up and drive.”

He growled, the husky little sound that he did in battle sometimes. I hated to think of the things that noise could do to me. I wonder what Seifer would have done if he'd known what that sound could make me do to myself. Especially alone in the showers after training. “Hyne, you change your mind just like a woman.”

“And you nag like one. We make a good pair.”

“Sure, a couple of old maiden aunties riding down the road to life. I'll get a hat with fuck ugly flowers, you get a handbag the size of a twin bed.”

I tightened my arms around his waist. I suspect it was only through sheer force of will that I managed not to get too much of a thrill from just holding onto him while we were on his damn bike, but I still managed to feel like a complete idiot. “Only if I get to beat you with it.”

“I'm not the one who wouldn't hand over the keys,” he reminded me. Hyne we wasn't going to drop that for weeks, was he?

“No, but I bet I could kill you pretty quickly.”

“Yeah, you're driving my blood pressure through the roof right now.”


	7. Chapter Six

Chapter Six

“It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.”  
Albert Einstein

 

March 21st.

 

The squeal was still echoing in his ears after over an hour. Even Selphie hadn't made that much of an impression on him in her most hyperactive coffee, sugar, and explosive fuelled moments - Squall was beginning to wonder if the headache would ever leave. He was also beginning to doubt it would.

The worry that he would be recognised had always been there, of course. Squall’s name had been plastered on the Estharian media enough to even reach some parts of the Galbadian continent, though not in such abundance, so he'd let himself become too complacent. He'd taken too many risks. It was his own fault for being so stupid as to let his guard down. He'd been too comfortable with Seifer, of all people, and now his worries had finally been realised. The maid from the damn hotel had realised who Squall was and screamed it so loudly that a nearby picture had fallen off its hook and crashed to the floor.

The walls were so thin that the entire hotel would have heard it. So, while Seifer was out getting coffee, Squall had bolted.

He'd had to take the bike. If it hadn't been for the bike Squall would have been stuck there until he could get a bus. That just wasn't an option given the price on his head - especially if the press were going to be involved. It was bad enough that she'd spotted him and screamed without Esthar finding out to boot. As it was, he hoped he could fool them into thinking he was heading to Deling, and Rinoa. Squall had even driven in the wrong direction at first to attempt to put them off his trail before doubling back to head south just as he and Seifer had been the previous day.

Hopefully Seifer would understand. He had half a mind to double back again to see if he could pick Seifer up along the road somewhere but Squall didn't want to get any closer than where he'd stopped - a couple of miles outside of the town. Too great a risk. At least he'd managed to grab Seifer's bags as well, so he wouldn't believe that Squall had abandoned him and stolen his bike.

It had been over an hour already though, and still no sign of...

Squall finally noticed a figure walking along the side of the road toward him. At first it was more of a trudge, feet dragging and every step, seeming to be struggling under the weight of the world. Then whoever it was saw him, and the pace became easier, more relaxed.

It had to be Seifer. Anyone else would have had reason to run; only Seifer Almasy would try and look cool as he approached the so called "Prince of Esthar." Prince of Esthar. Lion of Balamb. Squall Loire. Hyne, what was wrong with just calling him by his damned name? He turned the bike angrily and coasted towards Seifer.

“I knew you’d be out here,” Seifer smirked as soon as Squall was close enough to hear him. “Darlyne was in raptures about a real prince being at the Park and Nap, so I got the clue.”

“Sorry,” Squall shrugged. It was odd to apologise to Seifer, especially when he hadn’t really done all that much wrong. He’d saved himself - that was all. However making Seifer walk in the already substantial heat for a couple of miles meant that he needed to diffuse any anger before it surfaced, or they’d be duelling until the press arrived. “Did she notify anyone?”

“The whole world. We need to hit it.”’

Squall cursed under his breath, jerking his head in a beckoning motion. “Get on.”

Clambering on quickly and already looping one arm around Squall’s waist to hold on tightly, Seifer grinned. “On the upside, we stiffed them for the roo…!”

The sudden acceleration meant Seifer’s words were lost on the wind. Squall wanted to be out of the way as quickly as possible, even if he did owe Seifer for running out on him, he wasn’t up for listening to his bitching, whining or whatever he was going to be calling it that day. They had to disappear. Seifer could put his helmet on later, when they had at least another thirty miles between themselves and whatever reporters could be bothered to roll up to the hotel in a decent amount of time. “They can put up a little plaque and charge extra,” he yelled over the thrumming of the engine and the whistle of the wind.

“That’s what I thought!”

They fell into silence for a while. Squall concentrated on the road as Seifer clung to him tightly, ignoring everything but the world around him. As long as he could feel Seifer’s arms around him, he could let loose – just let the road and the adrenaline take him. He barely slowed down at all, avoiding the next town and continuing onwards.

He realised at last that Seifer had been quiet for almost an hour. Very not like him, especially given that he’d had to walk for so long under the already baking sun. Squall was at least concerned enough to slow a little. “I admit,” he called, the whine of the engine softening as he slowed. “I was expecting more bitching. You’re getting mellow with age.”

“I am too fucking hot and too fucking pissed off at the moment. You are so buying dinner,” Seifer huffed. He sounded like a petulant child, and Squall couldn’t resist responding in kind.

“I’ll even get you an ice cream.”

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately – Squall was never sure if he wanted to fight with Seifer or not now they were travelling together – Seifer didn’t notice. Either that or he was really suffering from the effects of the sun, in which case, the sooner they found some place to rest, the better.

“I’d settle for a cold beer,” he replied at last.

He sighed. Squall wasn’t entirely sure he was ready to deal with Seifer drunk again. Once had been more than enough, and he didn’t plan on making it a regular encounter. “Beer then. Maybe we should stick to the back roads?”

“Yes. Hell, we should go hang with the Tonberries after that last fiasco.”

Seifer was right. Not that Squall was about to admit that aloud but he didn’t particularly want to run off and spend time with Selphie’s favourite creatures. Not only were they cute – a sure sign of being completely evil – but they were as randomly violent as Selphie herself could be at times. However, very few people disturbed them, and that would help with their current state. Still, it wasn’t an idea Squall was willing to entertain until every other avenue had been exhausted. “She screeched at me.”

“Who knew you were afraid of maids?” Seifer was grinning – Squall could hear it in his voice. Strangely, that didn’t have the usual affect of making him tighten his hands into fists, and not just because the handlebars were in the way.

“More the squealing, jumping and yelling of ‘you’re that guy!’ Ugh,” Squall rolled his eyes, even though Seifer wouldn’t be able to see. Some habits were so ingrained that he couldn't help himself. Eye rolling had almost become a hobby, especially while he'd been in command.

Affecting a high voice, Seifer gestured daringly considering the speed they were going and his abject hate of the way Squall drove. “The one who dumped my sister!”

“No, that would be if I was Irvine.”

Seifer hummed in thought, loudly enough to be heard over the thrum of the engine. He had to be over the top when Squall couldn’t see him, just so he’d have the same effect as when Squall could see him. Still unable to remember just why he’d agreed to come with Seifer aside from certain parts of him urging him into it, Squall had to resign himself to the grandstanding. “The one who saved the nuns from the quick sand?”

“…do you have sun stroke?” he asked, glancing back just quickly enough to catch a glimpse of Seifer’s slightly reddened face before returning his gaze to the road ahead.

“Yes, and it’s all your fault.”

“I apologised!”

“Which doesn’t make it any less your fault,” Seifer poked his driver in the leg firmly, “But I do forgive you.”

Unable to move away from Seifer’s hands or face him long enough to be sure that he was okay, Squall resigned himself to driving again. So what if he’d finally learned to apologise to Seifer without pulling a blade on him or heading for the training grounds for a sparring session? It obviously didn’t make much difference. “Hyne, at least it isn’t far to the next town. If I get you some water, will you be okay to keep moving?”

“Skip the next town, like we did the last,” Seifer ordered, his voice taking on a truly serious tone for the first time in days. “We need to hit a larger city and let you be seen again. Maybe at the train station.”

While some odd part of him was thrilled that Seifer cared more about keeping Squall safe than his own potentially dangerous health issues, the majority of him was pissed off that Seifer could just ignore his own safety like that. Grandstanding as usual. “If you have sunstroke, you need to rest.”

“No, I’m tough. Just hot and crabby.”

“Seifer…” Squall had the urge to rub the scar on the bridge of his nose. It was only the potential fiery crash that kept him from doing it. That and his helmet being in the way. At least the war had helped him with his priorities.

“Squall, even a bone headed first year cadet can triangulate and figure out where we are going. I’m serious. If you don’t want to head for the city, head for the ruins or something.”

“Fine, whatever.”

“Isn’t there a draw point near there?” Seifer gestured to the remains of an old church of Hyne on the horizon. Squall could barely see it, the heat haze rising to make it seem a watery mirage far away. He didn’t recognise the landmarks here, couldn’t even remember seeing them on a SeeD map so he shrugged. “I have a couple of water spells left, I think, but we need to hide out.”

“Fine, but we can’t risk if for more than a couple of nights. I don’t want to get stuck out here without oil or water.”

Seifer peered over his shoulder. Squall shifted away just barely, not wanting to upset the bike’s balance but entirely too aware of how Seifer felt to remain composed with Seifer that close to him. “Fuel is going to be a problem. I’ll leave you in the desert and go in and get supplies, okay? That would be better – they didn’t really see the bike did they?”

“No,” Squall shook his head. “I got out of there too fast. I made it look like we were going the other way.”

“Then we can risk it.”

Debating whether he should give away his greatest secret, aside from the gay crush thing, Squall revved the engine and hummed. “I have a disguise, you know,” he said when he’d finally decided to just go ahead and tell Seifer. So what if he laughed? “I didn’t just walk out of Esthar as I am.”

“Please,” Seifer grabbed Squall’s arm almost tightly enough to bruise. “Tell me it’s drag.”

“It’s not drag,” Squall admitted reluctantly. “You’d laugh less at me in drag.”

“My interest is piqued.”

Squall shrugged out of Seifer’s grip, trying to concentrate on the road ahead which Seifer was making entirely too difficult today. Why today, what had changed? “But since you volunteered to go and get supplies, I have no reason to wear it.”

“Oh, cruelty. No, I’ll get the supplies at the next stop and you can wear the disguise at the one after that.”

That sounded like a bad idea. He wasn’t entirely sure what Seifer’s reaction to the ‘disguise’ would be, particularly with how ‘not Squall’ it made him. Well as long as Seifer wasn’t drinking or eating at the time Squall was sure it would be fine. “Since you’re so kind and thoughtful, I don’t have to.”

“Oh no, you owe me,” Seifer poked Squall in the perfect spot in the ribs to make him squirm and swerve the bike almost dangerously. Choking back a laugh, Squall struggled to concentrate on the road and straighten in his seat again.

“Fine, Whatever.”

“...How did you get out of Esthar?”

“A boat.”

That gave Seifer pause long enough for Squall to get comfortable again – though it took a little squirming to get his ass back in just the right place. At least Seifer wouldn’t be suffering any adverse effects from that – he was way too straight to enjoy another guy squirming however briefly against his crotch.

“They have ports, idiot. They’re reopening up trade negotiations with Galbadia now they exist again.”

“Not in the city,” Seifer countered.

“Fine, transporter, bus, then boat. Dropped me in Dollet.”

“On your head,” he said, patting Squall on the head as if feeling about for a bump even though the helmet was in the way. Why did Seifer get so adventurous when he was the one in the driving seat? Was it boredom, affection or was Seifer just trying to piss him off? Not much of a question really, of course he was trying to piss Squall off - it was as inevitable as the sun rising after all. “Why not stay there? Contact Rin?”

“Loire knows about Rinoa, it’d be the first place he’d look for me,” That hurt more than it should have. He’d long since realised that any romantic feelings he had for Rinoa were nothing more than the knightly duties and worse still. He loved Rinoa in some way, respected that she’d tried to keep up with the stronger, faster kids who’d been training their whole life for a war and managed to almost keep pace but she was too young for him and for war. He’d always love her, but not in the way that she needed or deserved. At least she'd understood that.

“Okay,” Seifer shrugged, by some miracle recognising a raw nerve and changing the subject rather than tap dancing on it. Perhaps it was because he too knew the pain of having a sorceress far away - even further away than Squall’s own. “We’ll go until we have half a tank and then hunt for a place where you can hole up. If we had water, I’d say stay here for a week or so.”

“It’s not worth waiting that long.”

Then the comment from left field. Well..., not quite left field as Squall could see the logic in it but still getting from staying out to what came next took some tangent that Squall had trouble following. “You should dye your hair.”

“Maybe.”

“Get a poodle perm.”

Squall hit the brakes, stopping after a short distance as Seifer almost went right over his head and the bug shield. It was only by suddenly clutching at Squall that he was able to remain in his seat. “You really have got sun stroke. Maybe we should stop sooner.”

“What?” Seifer threw his hands out, grinning like an idiot. So it was mostly a joke and Squall could relax, there would be no perms and no hair dye, no matter how much they would change his appearance and keep him out of the Estharian eye. “It’s something you’d never have, right?”

“For good reason!”

“Work with me, here,” Seifer settled his hands on his hips and glowered at Squall. “What about that sun tan stuff girls use? To darken up your skin?”

“If we can find one that doesn’t make me itch.”

“There’s always drag,” he suggested helpfully.

With a sigh, Squall shook his head. “You just want to see me in a dress.”

“I could use the laugh, yeah.”

“So I have to suffer?” he rolled his eyes. Seifer was edging back into bully mode, make the smaller guy suffer for his amusement, and there was no Zell here to divert his attention so Squall had to be the one to take it like a man. Of course, this meant that Seifer was immensely bored and it was probably time to let him drive for a while. “I can’t wear women’s clothing. I have no cleavage.”

“Neither did Quis, until about four years ago.”

“Seifer. I walked through Esthar with everyone who had seen me on news broadcasts and newspapers for weeks unable to recognise me. I’ll be fine with what I have.”

“Okay, then let’s see it.”

Squall revved the engine and pulled off the road towards the old ruined houses that lurked amongst the scrubby bushes and dust mounds. They would be reasonable shelter for the night, and a good land mark for Seifer to find him again, probably the easiest out here in the middle of nowhere. “Okay, you go and get supplies and I’ll change.”

“I’ll be back after sundown, so don’t panic. I’ll leave you with all the gear.”

Climbing off the bike and eyeing Seifer when he moved forward to take the weight of the machine, Squall couldn’t help one last order, no matter how futile he knew it would likely prove with Seifer Almasy. At last he could fully appreciate how pale Seifer was – for Seifer. The walk in the sun had gotten to Seifer more than Squall had realised if he still looked so sickly. “Be careful.”

“If I come back with a few billion cops after me, hide.”

“That’s why I told you to be careful,” Squall poked Seifer deliberately on his arm, at the point where he’d been injured at first night, then bent to grab his backpack out of one of the saddlebags.

Seifer just grinned. “That’s why I told you to hide.”

“Okay, get out of here.”

“I’ll be back,” Seifer revved the engine, spinning the bike in a circle. With a flash of a smile and a wink, he headed for the road again. “Don’t wait up!”

 

 

While Seifer heroically disappeared with the bike on the all important mission of “buy supplies and bullshit to the locals”, I built up a fire ready for the evening, which even in our reasonably good shelter of the ruined church of Hyne would likely be cold and unpleasant, and then changed into my disguise from my escape from Esthar.

I trusted Seifer to come back. He wouldn't abandon me unless something happened – if he hadn't turned me in already he was hardly going to leave me now. I suspected he needed me as much as I needed him. For company, for duelling, for the past we'd never quite managed to leave behind.

Seifer was gone so long that I even managed to get some sleep, which was good as I didn’t have him elbowing me in the ribs, pawing me or dragging me over like a teddy bear. I liked the guy a lot but Hyne it’d be nice to just be able to lie down for a night without him trying to use me as a blanket. He really didn’t understand what that did to me. I was human after all, a teenager physically and without Shiva I could only take so much of an attractive guy pawing me without reacting in some fashion.

The approaching juddering growl of the motorbike’s engine, one I already recognised too well, woke me from my nap. It wasn’t quite dark, though the sun was rapidly sinking below the horizon and the last of the light gave an already red desert an even redder hue, as though the rolling dunes were actually a sea of blood. It was nothing I hadn’t seen in my nightmares before, nothing I couldn’t handle.

The engine noise rolled through the air, though it was hard to tell from inside the ruined building, I was half sure Seifer was taking the bike around to the back of our makeshift shelter to park it out of sight of the road. I assumed that he’d have the brains to do that anyway. I stood; ready to greet him when he came in through the one surviving usable doorway.

In short order, he appeared, struggling with a couple of paper bags filled with – I guessed – our supplies and already digging around in the bags for something. “They threw in a pile of those blue freezer things so the beer is still c-”

He’d looked up at me and, with his eyes wide and his jaw hanging open, was just staring. Not that I blamed Seifer, I wouldn’t have even known it was me in the mirror if we’d had one. I was dressed like I should have been hanging around with Zell - like a T-boarder. I had wide, blue denim shorts with pockets on the thighs that came down past my knees, a tee-shirt three sizes too large for me with the logo from Zell’s board emblazoned on the front and a jacket that barely had arms longer than the arms on the tee-shirt.I hadn’t bothered to mess with my hair like I had during my escape from Esthar - I knew the outfit would be enough on it’s own and I didn’t want to gel my hair when we didn’t have a working bathroom where I could wash it out afterwards.

I folded my arms over my chest and said “Laugh.”

I watched Seifer’s knees start to buckle and rescued the beers before he dropped them. Moment later he was on the floor, laughing his ass off and twitching in place while I was cracking open the first cool beer of the evening. I hoped there wasn’t anything breakable in the other bag of supplies, the way he’d gone down I wasn’t sure anything would have survived.

“You...” Seifer wheezed after a good five minutes, “Are a fucking genius.”

“It’s taken you this long to notice?” I asked, poking him with the toe of my bright blue and black sneakers. He didn’t pull away; he was too busy trying to keep breathing on the dusty floor.

He wiped away a tear, I wasn’t sure if it was from laughing or he was trying to make a point. “This is the first brilliant thing you did without me there to help you. I’m so proud.”

“Stay still; let me drop one of these blue things down the back of your pants.”

“Don’t waste it!” Seifer exclaimed, reaching for me with grabby hands. Or perhaps it was for the ice pack – however, a guy can dream occasionally, right? “Put it on my head.”

I pulled another beer from the bag and put that in one of his still grabbing hands and pushed the icepack into the other. He put the beer to his head first, then switched out for the ice pack and slowly inched himself into a sitting position to drink the beer. He still looked pale, but better than he had before at least. I hadn’t realised how much I’d been worried about the idiot until I’d noticed he really was okay,.

“All it needs is a temporary tattoo, cover the scar up.”

I didn’t want to draw any attention to the rough skin that cut drastically down between my eyes, not even if it was covered with a fake tattoo. The idea was valid but any attention on that part of me might have had questions asked. It wasn’t wise. “So, do I look like Squall Leonhart?”

“No, you look like a punk,” he grinned at me and lifted his bottle in a toast. “Wait, maybe that is Squall Leonhart.”

“I have this incredible urge to start swatting at flies,” I muttered. I wasn’t sure I’d been loud enough to hear until Seifer started actually, physically rolling around on the floor in the dust laughing again. I’d never seen anyone actually do that outside of a few Saturday morning cartoons, but there Seifer was, rolled onto his side clutching his stomach as though he were afraid his sides would split. “Enjoy it while you can, I’m changing back in a while.”

“No!” Seifer sat up, struggling for his breath again. “You need the road dust to look right.”

“I can’t carry out a conversation with you when I’m wearing this,” I paused for a moment to think. “I couldn’t before, but there was less laughing.”

That seemed to sober him up a little at least, he was finally breathing and though he snickered every now and then he was back to normal. For Seifer at least. I could practically see the gears whirring behind his eyes as he thought. “Yea, okay, but you should wear it all day before we hit the next burg. We can afford to skip a few, I got a gas can and some extra rubber bands.”

“I will. Enjoy it, after this beer I’m changing,” I shrugged and sat down next to him – I’d proved myself to him yet again, why did I keep forcing myself into doing that? It was ridiculous, he wasn’t my big brother and he wasn’t anything to me but an acquaintance. An old rival. Why did proving myself to him seem so big and important and vital all the time?

“To Zell,” Seifer lifted his bottle in another toast and I matched him. “May his hair stand forever tall.”

“May he always reach the hot dogs in the cafeteria.”

Seifer clinked his bottle against mine since I was close enough to reach this time. “Amen,” he grinned and finished his drink in one fell swoop. I watched him swallowing, resting my bottle on my knee. I noticed stupid things about him some times, like the way his throat moved when he swallowed or how deep the tan was and how far it went down beneath his shirt.

“You know the hardest part of this is wearing the pants,” I said at last just so I had something to distract me from the thoughts of how much I liked watching his throat move like that. Or to prevent me from thinking about what that meant. “I think I could jump off the roof and they’d act as parachutes.”

He tugged on the hem of one leg, noting how far that the damn thing moved when he pulled it. “We’ll have to tie them down or the wind resistance will blow you off the bike.”

I think my expression gave away how I felt about that. “I’m an air brake. How embarrassing.”

Seifer looked at me for a good thirty seconds and folded over, laughing yet again.

I couldn’t keep talking to or at him while he was laughing like that. Especially when he started to roll to the side, flopping down with his head in my lap. I had to push him away before I had an adverse and embarrassingly teenage reaction. “That’s it, I’m taking off my pants.”

“Returning the sails to the good ship breezy balls?” Seifer asked when he could speak without snickering again. He was still flopped down on his side next to me, his head almost close enough to touch my leg. Why did I only notice this stuff when it was dark, when it was late. Maybe it was the beer, after all I’d seen what it had done to Seifer back at the coach stop. Maybe I should avoid the alcohol for the time being.

“Yes. With Captain Wind-dick.”

“And his luscious first mate, Miss Whoosh-cooze,” Seifer nodded as though I’d proposed a very good idea. He hadn’t quite drunk enough to be worrying yet, fortunately for me.

I have no idea what possessed me to speak again. Perhaps I had been spending too much time with Seifer if I was assisting him with his flights of fancy and insanity. “Her face has never been seen, her skirt is covering it all the time.”

“But she remains the darling of the navy.”

Something told me if I spent more time with him, I was only going to be getting worse. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing any more.


	8. Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An encounter with geezards leads to seeing a movie together.

Chapter Seven

“The roughest part of that lifestyle is the travel and early mornings.”  
Josie Maran

 

March 23rd:

 

We spent a couple of nights holed up in the partly ruined Church of Hyne in the abandoned town, mainly napping or trying not to kill each other – depending on your point of view. Then, one morning, I woke up to small rock geezards snuffling through our packs and eating some of our meagre supplies while Seifer freaked out.

“Hyne bedamned sons of bitches,” he swore, as I was still trying to achieve conscious thought.

“Who are hyne bedamned sons of bitches this time?” I'd asked as Seifer scrabbled over to our bags, before I'd noticed the creatures.

“Geezards!”

He had Hyperion in his hand already and was kicking a geezard away from my backpack and his saddlebags. Seifer was still barefoot and those things had skin like a file, that had to hurt. The next best thing to coffee was adrenaline and I rolled to my feet, grabbing my gunblade from the junction as I moved. Between us, we killed a couple of the little bastards easily and I chased the rest of them out into the early morning light. When I came back, I noticed that they'd spilt some of our water; their sharp claws had pierced one of the plastic bottles I'd been carrying when they'd ransacked my gear.

Seifer was hunched over the bags, searching through things too and cursing in his usual inventive manner. “God damn things,” was about the most coherent, sensible thing he said. “Fuck. We can boil the containers but half our water is gone. We'll have to find a well.”

“There must be one close if there was a town here. Hopefully it's still functional.”

“I bet the Geezards are nesting there,” he growled, standing up and kicking the busted bottle from my backpack. It fell over and spilled the last of the water into the dusty sand of the church's long buried floor.

“It's only water. If we can't find it, we can just get back on the road. You said that town wasn't far away.”

“It's the god damn principle of the thing!” Seifer waved his hand with Hyperion absently – that usually meant there was going to be a rant, so I brushed my feet off and put my boots on while he got on with it. “I fucking hate Geezards.”

“Why do you hate them so much? And don't give me that ‘shit unexpectedly’ line.”

“Well, they do, and they steal supplies. What they can't take they crap in. Also, you haven't lived until you've awakened in the desert to find your arm around a Geezard that's snuggled in for warmth during the night.”

It must have been the adrenaline that made me say the next thing. It certainly wasn't caffeine, and wasn't entirely conscious, but I said it before I realised I'd said it. “Was it smoking a cigarette?”

Seifer gave me a double take. His eyes narrowed in the way that told me I'd pissed him off and in the next thirty seconds I needed to run for the hills, or at least somewhere we could spar without hitting walls.

Oh well. I stood up, shouldering Lionheart. In for a penny, in for a pound, if I had to run, I might as well make it for something more than just a one liner. “Did you forget to leave the gil on the dresser?” I added, giving him a smirk that he would have been proud of.

Seifer roared. There were words in there but they were barely discernible. I think I caught “run for your life!” before I turned tail and did just that out into the early morning light. As soon as I hit the fresh air outside the old shell of the church, I cracked up. I did all my sparring with a blade in my hand, not verbally, so I couldn't help but laugh at his reaction. He could dish it out but not take it – as always.

“If you make me chase you all the way to town to kick your ass, I will!”

I skidded to a halt, bringing Lionheart up to block the strike I knew was coming. Even prepared, the blow was hard enough to stagger me a step since I was still laughing my ass off. “Come on, that was funny.”

Seifer kept hitting hard, letting his anger control him. He struck wildly, easy enough to block him or divert him but the force behind the blows was enough to have me backing up a step every time his blade hit mine. I stepped on a rock and fell onto my back, Lionheart skittering away from me a few feet in the dust. Seifer held his blade to my throat, smirking. He'd proved he was better than me for this particular day. “Say 'I'm a geezard's little bitch' and I'll let you up.”

“You're a geezard's little bitch,” I smirked right back at him. “Was the geezard supposed to leave you the gil instead?”

“Hold still, I don't want to mess up your clothes when I cut your Hyne bedamned head off.”

I rolled my eyes and huffed. He couldn't stand me getting the upper hand on him in any way at all – especially not verbally, which had never been my strong point. Apparently I'd made his dick look small and now he had to make me pay. “Drama queen. You didn't kill me in the war, you won't kill me now.”

“I sure as fuck am taking my revenge, though. You owe me now, you have to...,” he paused, lifting his head to think about the things he could potentially make me do to pay for my thoughtlessness of proving that he didn't have the monopoly on wordplay. “What the fuck? Nest!”

Just like that, he didn't care about my little indiscretion at all. It was like I’d never said a word and he’d not chased me out into the dust like an idiot. He reached down and took my hand when I offered it, hauling me to my feet as though I weighed nothing. When I was standing again, he pointed with Hyperion, her long blade catching the early morning light. She really was a beautiful weapon.

“Anyway, you will wear the Zell suit because you totally owe me,” he finished, glancing at me with a smug enough smirk to tell me that part was definitely going to happen even if I didn't like it. He would dress me by force if he had to. Of course, that meant he would have to undress me first - I barely resisted the urge to go for it.

“I'm waiting for you to remember you're barefoot,” I shrugged.

“Fuck,” he said, and glanced down as though he needed to confirm what I'd said – as though I'd lie to him about something like that. He let go of me and turned to run gingerly back to the little shelter we'd had been hiding in, repeating the word “fuck” every few steps.

“I don't owe you anything anyway!” I called after him.

“Yes you do, I won that fight fair and square and goddamnit, I'm going to firaga this vermin hole.”

While Seifer dealt with his habit of not thinking and rushing blindly into dumb things, I crept closer to the nest. It was in a small hollow, with three partly crumbled walls and a tin roof. Geezards liked humid places to make their nests, so I had a hunch. One that was proved right when I got close enough to see in but not close enough to worry any of the inhabitants – the well for this village was hidden inside the little shelter. It hadn't been a lack of water that had killed off this town and left it to the wind and the sand to reclaim.

I strolled back to our camp, where I found Seifer standing on one leg trying to brush sand off his right foot first in order to get his sock and boot on – I'd really have thought he'd be done by now but he was a fussy ass at the best of times. Let alone when he was in a pissy mood and I’d gotten one over on him. “Don't blow the nest up – the well cap's in there.”

“Fuck fuck fuckety fuck,” he said, oh so eloquently.

“We can get fresh water,” I shrugged and had to pause. “Did you really just say that?”

“Look, it's hard to be creative while standing on one leg with geezards eating your breakfast,” he gestured to our supplies with a sock and nearly tumbled over. “And they got the coffee, I should point out.”

The ultimate insult. The ultimate sin. They had to pay. “Fry the little bastards.”

Seifer nearly fell over again as he laughed at me. Okay I was only half serious but I really wasn't used to people laughing at stuff I'd said. Laughing at me in general, sure, but not at stuff I'd said. That was still a little weird. “Cover me until I'm dressed and then we can clean up this town.”

I looked over our camp and our supplies. They'd got some of the food and pretty much wiped out our water supply entirely – there were only a couple of bottles left. I was just glad that we had the luxury of the town being close enough that we could move on, even if I was probably going to have to put on my disguise to do it. Seifer wouldn't let me get out of that now.

By the time I'd finished tossing what we couldn't take with us into a bag for us to throw away, I looked over at Seifer, pulling his second boot on. “Looks like we need to get on the road whether we like it or not.”

“Yeah, but let's not go empty handed. If we can clear out the nest, we'll recoup some of our losses and the next poor bastard who camps here can get water without losing an arm.”

“Are you done fussing with your shoes?”

“I don't know,” he said, lifting one leg to examine a boot. “Do they match my outfit?”

“I really don't think your date will mind,” I said. Just a little harking back to the geezard jokes from earlier but either he didn't care or he just didn't pay attention.

“We're good to go then.”

We made our way over to the well cap. Geezards weren't a serious threat to either of us, a year ago they'd been a halfway decent fight – now one expertly placed blow would have them finished off in record time. I let him force them out with his spells and ran clean up on the ones that skittered out to escape the magic. It didn't take more than half an hour and it only took that long because we were trying not to damage the well.

When they were all gone, I watched him start to check them for things we could sell. “You know, if I use one of our remedies I could sterilise the water cans.”

“Go for it,” he said. “And I'm serious, put the Zell suit on. We're still pretty close to that town where you were spotted.”

Even if I was still very proud of that disguise – I hadn’t been a SeeD for nothing but that outfit may have been a stroke of genius even if I did say so myself – I really disliked wearing it. I felt exposed with parts of my legs bare and entirely too much of the loose denim fabric to contend with. The tee shirt wasn’t so bad, but the jacket over the top was awkward. I liked much closer fitting clothes to be honest. It was harder to fight with my blade in the loose clothes and I didn’t like the way it left me feeling vulnerable. However, Seifer had a point. We were only a few hours ride from the town where I’d been recognised and that meant it was likely that either the media, or Esthar could know where I was by now. Or even worse, both. “Only because you won the duel.”

“It’s a good disguise,” Seifer shrugged, tucking the rest of what he’d salvaged into a bag. “You know what? I think we have enough loot here to spring for a movie or something. What do you say, spend the throw up hot part of the day in a nice, dark theatre watching fake tits and bad special effects?”

To be honest, I didn’t care whether the tits were real or fake – I wasn’t interested either way. However a movie theatre meant two things. Dark, and cool. I wanted both of those. “Sure, air conditioning would be nice.”

“We'll score some popcorn and a soda and hang out. We can drive in the evening when it's cooler, we might make better time.”

“It'd be better for the bike too,” I admitted. See, it wasn't just for me, I needed to take care of his dumb bike that liked to eat seals like Zell liked to eat hotdogs or Selphie liked to eat chocolate centred peppermints. Not to mention drink oil like I drank coffee. “I should try and pick up some more seals in case it goes again, too.”

“Okay, let's blow this popstand then.”

I finished up with the canteens, refilling them when the remedy had done its work. It wasn't as perfect a clean as sterilising but it would take care of anything that would give magic effects. We didn't have the time, or fuel to burn to boil water for a real clean anyway, and a couple of drops of remedy in the water too would stop us from picking anything up.

As I stood up, Seifer did the thing where he messed my hair up. Fortunately for him, I was in a reasonable mood even without coffee and I could take his determination to be an asshole. “Now, about those comments...”

“Next time you go flirting with Geezards, try to get a better rate of pay,” I ducked out from under his hand and headed back for the shelter where we'd left our things, dragging the fingers of one hand through my hair to straighten it again, while slinging the canteens over my other shoulder.

“I am going to wait until you are asleep. Then I'm going to sell you to them.”

“You have to admit,” I glanced back at him just as I ducked into the shadows. He was following along, looking perfectly smug and happy over what had happened. Even if I'd gotten the better of him, in his head, that never really occurred and somehow he'd won everything. “That was on the ball considering we haven't had coffee yet.”

I ducked inside and started to change. It took more time to get the shorts unrolled and the right way around than it did to get the rest of my clothes off, but I endured. Better to be unrecognisable as me than to let Esthar get anywhere near me. “Yeah, I totally have to give you that one,” Seifer said, packing up my discarded clothes along with the rest of our belongings while I tried to make sure the shorts wouldn't look weird or balloon up on me. How the hell Zell wore those things for fighting in close combat without snagging them on something, I'd never know. “If you ever repeat it, of course, I'll kick your ass.”

“SeeD's honour,” I saluted him sloppily. Xu would have written me up for how bad it was. Seifer would have had me in detention back at garden. “Next,” I added, as cheerfully as I could manage, “Marlboros.”

He gave me a look that said he had his gunblade and was willing to draw it again. “Don't even.”

I shrugged – I'd won that one. Chalk up another victory for me, I was getting better at this shit. I was also getting better at putting the goop on my hair to make it do weird things that Zell would have been proud of. Under no circumstances was he ever allowed to see me in the disguise - he’d think he’d rubbed off on me. “I have the air brakes on. I'm ready.”

He looked me up and down, snickered like someone had just told him a dirty joke and struggled to maintain a serious expression. I don't know why the sight of me in the disguise was so damn funny to him, “We'll go slow so you don't blow off the bike.”

“You owe me a very large caffienated drink for this,” I said. He climbed on the bike and twsted to pat the seat behind him, inviting me to join him.

“Got it. I'll even make sure the ice is crushed in your soda.”

Seifer was nuts. I was even more so for following him. I didn't care.

 

 

 

 

As I'd been beaten, I let Seifer take me into town. He’d managed to get used to me in the wide denim shorts and tee shirt, enough that he only laughed at me once every fifteen minutes. It made quite a difference, I could hold short conversations, then he would start giggling and I’d be able to have some time to ignore him again. It did mean that I had to drag him around while he regained control of his higher functions.

It was also Seifer’s idea – when we’d found somewhere to park on the edge of yet another little nameless town somewhere south east of where I’d been recognised - for us to get resupplied after we’d sold our loot from the geezards. Mostly we stuck with the usual stuff - more coffee, bottled water and cheap, small, portable food that wouldn’t melt in the heat. He tried to sneak a couple of slim jims into our shopping - I tried to sneak them back out but I was overruled.

After we’d loaded our stuff into the saddlebags on the bike, I was almost wondering if I could sneak away and change into something more normal. The town was quiet, no one suspicious even looked our way twice. This with me wearing the evil leg whipping shorts of doom. “Maybe I should go change.”

“No way, I won. You wear the disguise,” he glanced down the street at the small building at the end of it. The theatre. “Let’s hit the matinee, it’s getting too hot to think out here.”

“Even in Trabia, it’d be too hot for you to think.”

He surprised me, grabbing the back of my neck and steering me towards the movie theatre. The grip on my neck meant I bowed my head, so I couldn’t see anyone we passed on the street. I wondered if he’d noticed something I hadn’t, or if I’d just pissed him off enough to make him grab me. More importantly, the few people we passed couldn’t see my face either. I struggled, just enough that it would look like it wasn’t my idea. Not enough to draw unwarranted attention – or so I hoped. When he stopped outside the cinema, I elbowed him in the stomach. “Get off me, I can walk dammit.”

“In those shorts?” Seifer asked, looking at my legs doubtfully, even stroking his chin for effect.

“I said get off me.”

“Whatever,” he waved his hand and checked out the poster featuring the matinee movie offerings. Apparently pickings were slimmer than I would have even expected for such a backwater town and Seifer agreed. “Let’s see... today our choices are,” he paused and sighed defeatedly. “Abysmal. A heart warming coming home chick flick, or a bad remake of cheap tin toys eat Deling.”

Without missing a beat, I said “Cheap tin toys eat Deling.”

“Thank you. Not that you really had much choice but thank you for not making me wonder about you.”

I was not, nor had I ever been, a romantic movie kind of guy. Rin had dragged me to one before Loire had happened and I’d disappointed her by falling asleep after fifteen minutes. Best sleep I’d had in weeks at that point. It was one of the signs that we just weren’t right for each other I suppose, a good boyfriend would have been completely enraptured by her entirely but to my shame I was more attracted to the male lead at that point. Even he hadn’t been enough to keep me awake though. I looked up at Seifer, cursing the fact he was still taller than me and said in my most serious tone, “Well, we never go anywhere I want to anyway.”

“Don’t start nagging about your sister’s again,” Seifer pushed me towards the door. I wasn’t sure if he was playing up for people who could hear us or just to confuse me again. Either way, I was going to keep up with him. “The things she does to meatloaf should be illegal.”

“Chocolate sauce is meant to be in meatloaf, I think,” I shrugged, getting the door to let him in. As soon as we were inside the building I noted the change in temperature. Even though the front wall of the building was glass, the air conditioning was on full blast and I felt so much better almost instantly that I was almost sleepy.

“Only at your house, hyper boy.”

Seifer winked at me and headed for the kiosk, buying tickets for the film, and drinks. It was almost a second thought that he picked up a tub of popcorn that I was sure was the size of my head. Not Seifer’s head. Nothing was that big. He handed me my drink and my ticket. “Thanks pop.”

“You won’t thank me later when you find out I spent the rent money on a barrel of popcorn,” he turned me around with one hand on my shoulder and pushed me gently to the door.

I shrugged and let him steer me. Sometimes it was easier than fighting him off. “Good thing we’re getting a free room again tonight.”

“Yeah, and this is better than roasting out there anyway. It repeats in two hours, we can sleep here and drive all night if you’d rather.”

“Might be easier on the bike if we did that.”

“Cool.”

“It’s your bike, your choice. I hope you won’t mind if I sleep through our date anyway.”

“As long as you don’t spill the slurpee on me.”

“Just the ice,” I waggled my drink at him threateningly. The theatre wasn’t too bad. It lacked the feeling that I’d stick to the floor at any moment because of the sheer amount of gum and sugar residue left in the carpet that Balamb had, and once again it was blissfully cool after the heat of the midday sun. I’d always had trouble with the heat. Now without Shiva with me, it was only getting worse and the desert could be so cold at night yet so hot in the day and there were weeks of this to come.

“Depends on how bad the show is,” Seifer steered me to a row closer to the back than the front. We sat almost in the middle of that row too, and it looked like we were one of very few to bother turning up for the movie. There were only seven people, and that included Seifer and me. “I may have to stay awake just to throw popcorn.”

Why did I suspect he was going to get us kicked out? “Fine, but don’t wake me up.”

“Only if it gets good,” he promised, winking at me as we settled into our slightly squeaky and overstuffed red velour chairs. He instantly put his feet up on the back of the seat in front of him and settled to watch the previews.

“There’s about as much chance of that as there is of me eating a hotdog.”

“I have wine gums,” Seifer offered helpfully.

“I’m not that much of a lightweight,” I pushed his hand holding the paper bag of sweets out to me away and settled myself in. I found it hard to get comfortable in my ‘dincht’ clothes, especially when I had such a small seat to deal with. Finally I stashed my drink, settling back to watch the screen drowsily. There was no way I’d manage to watch the whole thing.

“Now there’s a temptation,” Seifer wriggled at my side to move close enough for me to rest my head on his shoulder. He didn’t say a word, but he gave me a look, and a shrug and that was enough. “However, since we spent a whole three gil each to watch this mess on the screen, I’ll let that one slide.”

“You’re so good to me,” I said, mostly joking. The movie started then, and the sound was a far cry from the place back in Balamb, coming through tinny and quite hollow. The big dramatic opening sequence was a boy throwing toys, followed by a mock lunar cry – recreated with cheap and obviously plastic toys - they bounced and I could see more strings than the Deling orchestra had. “Seifer. This is where I go to sleep.”

Seifer made no comment. He was enraptured by the screen already and I didn’t want to disturb him further. I rested my head on his shoulder at last – it was more comfortable than trying to use the seat – and closed my eyes.

 

Seifer was shaking me. “Wake up! You gotta see this!”

It took me a minute to gather my bearings. Finally I realised that we were still in the movies and I’d fallen asleep as I’d planned. I couldn’t have been asleep that long, the movie was still on. I looked at him blearily, waiting for some clarification on what the hell he meant. At long last, he pointed at the screen, laughing his ass off.

Filled with dread, I turned my head to look at it instead of him only to be completely horrified. As I watched, a car with an approximation of a SeeD logo pulled up in front of the giant killer toys and a guy got out. A tall guy with long brown hair, broad shoulders and a lot of muscles. He was wearing black leather pants, a matching jacket and had a gunblade on his shoulder.

Then the female gunslinger who got out after him – looking remarkably like Irvine, even down to hair colour – and I tried to will the floor to open up and swallow me because she called him “Lyon”. Even more so when, after a lot of posing, he attacked the toys incredibly poorly. He must have been a rookie but hyne didn’t these people have an advisor?

“Oh Hyne no. Really, no,” I found myself murmuring. Seifer beside me was laughing so hard that he was almost spilling the popcorn and tears were rolling down his cheeks, especially when the guy playing the bad approximation of me saved the gunslinger from certain doom and confirmed my suspicion for who she was supposed to be by calling her ‘Kenni’. “They didn’t.”

I watched what turned out to be the last thirty five or so minutes of the show. I got to watch while all the other SeeDs who had been called in were flattened, leaving Lyon and Kenni to save the day, and in particular the maternity hospital. They had really awful sex, with Kenni crying at least twice, beat the master of toys and promised to help the world rebuild. When the credits began to run, showing SeeD taking away everyone’s toys, I turned to Seifer. “When I turn eighteen, the first thing I’m doing is suing these bastards.”

He’d laughed so hard he was just hiccupping now, trying to get his breath back. “I’d just pretend it never happened. If you sue, Zell will go rent the movie.”

I leant forward, resting my forehead on the back of the seat in front of me, sure I was blushing bright enough to light the room. “Oh Hyne.”

“The movie is from Galbadia, so that explains Irvine at least. Wonder where the rest of the kids were…” he rubbed my back in an attempt to be soothing and maybe even comforting. I was too busy trying to destroy the director with my mind to care much, but a part of me did appreciate the way he touched me. “Whoever coached that actor in gunblading needs shooting, damn.”

“I’m going to beat him with whatever’s left of the director,” I growled, which made him laugh all over again.

“No one would recognise you, based on that film. Who did they think you were, Raijin?” he tried to pull me back into a sitting position but I shrugged him off. Fortunately he didn’t keep trying so he wouldn’t see how embarrassed I was until I’d regained control of myself.

“I don’t know, but I think I’m going to have nightmares now.”

“You did manage to take out master toy.”

I was sure he was trying to cheer me up, rather than tease me for once. This event in and of itself was rare enough that I should have marked the date on my calendar but I was too busy feeling sorry for myself. “Nightmares!”

“Besides, Irvy had a nice ass,” he chuckled. Now that was enough to finally make me look up and stare at him. He had on what he termed his shit eating grin, the one he got when he was winning in the efforts to piss me or Zell off without either of us being able to get up and fight him. “Okay, okay. Go back to sleep, I promise I won’t wake you up this time.”

“Cruel bastard,” I grumbled, settling back and resting my head on his shoulder again. I liked this, I liked the moments of being close to him, even if they could be utter torture at times. “I’m going to tell Irvine you said he had a nice ass next time I see him.”

Hyne, every time I thought of one of my friends it was like an icicle to the chest, and I knew how that felt better than most. Irvine, Selphie, Zell, Quistis, the people I’d left behind even though it hadn’t been my idea. Would they forgive me when I went back? If I could go back.

“I told him last time. I was having trouble keeping Ulti’s shock troopers off it.”

That pulled me back from the brink of my depressing and sleepy thoughts. I sat up and looked at him. “Wait, what?”

“Go go sleep,” Seifer pulled me back down – or rather tried. I pulled out of his grip before he could manage that.

“I missed something.”

“About fifty minutes of really bad special effects.”

I shook my head. He knew that wasn’t what I meant and he should have known by now that I wouldn’t let him get away with it that easily. “No, I mean about Ultimecia’s shock troopers.”

He gave a heavy sigh, ran a hand over his face and shifted so he was closer. He kept his voice low, looking anywhere but at me, and he was blushing. It made me want to offer him some comfort somehow, though I didn’t know how. “When we took Kinneas out at D District, we were going to let him go because he was a spy for Martine who was playing both sides. I assume you knew that.”

I nodded. I’d suspected it before, just never had the proof. I was careful about how much I trusted any of the people I met in the war. It was war – there would always be suspicion, even if I had known them when we were children.”I suspected. Why do you think I set Selphie on him? He spent so much time following her around that there was no chance of him seeing anything sensitive. Unless festival plans count.”

“Well, he switched to your side. Anyway, some of the shock troopers wanted to have some fun with him first, I had to explain that while I might only cut off one of their nuts each, since I’d be using a gunblade I could, in fact, render them all legless.”

Staring at him for a while, I tried to work out why he’d be so embarrassed about that. Why he’d look away from me – sure it was from his time as a knight for Ultimecia, but he was acting for the good of someone. “Thanks for looking out for him.”

“I have some standards. Only scum allows their men to rape and pillage.”

I leant back far enough that I could grab his head and turn his face to look at me. “You don’t have to explain yourself, Seifer.”

“Get some sleep,” he grinned. “You’re driving tonight.”

With that I let him go and pushed him back in the seat again, returning to my sleeping position. To stake my claim on his shoulder, I rubbed my chin on his arm before I settled against him once more. “I knew you’d be a good leader some day.”

“But no one has made a movie about me,” he pretended to be upset, as though he really cared. Hyne knows what they would have done to him for such a block buster. Maybe turned him into some large breasted blonde bombshell who could crack walnuts between her thighs.

That didn’t bear thinking about. To stop him noticing my shudder I joked, “Can’t reproduce perfection, idiot... that’s for letting me drive tonight.”

“Only because I’m going to be sleeping, since I got to see Lyon and Kenni save the world again.”

“Next, spandex.”

“And a cool cape,” he added helpfully. When I shook my head he added. “Aw, but it could billow in the breeze!”

He was the one who’d always wanted to be a hero. The valiant knight. All I’d ever wanted was to be left alone and yet here we were, Seifer a wanted villain and me travelling with one of the people I’d known all of my comparatively short life, no matter how long it felt to me. I didn’t want to be a hero, that had always been his gig when we were kids. “I’d never be taken seriously again.”

“Point,” he hummed, ruffling my hair with his free hand, at least remembering to put down the popcorn before he did it. Good, I wouldn’t have to brush popcorn out of the sticky gel on my hair. He helpfully wiped his hand on my shoulder when he was done too. “And all those chilidogs to keep the cape billowing can be hard on the system.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re an idiot?” I said, not lifting my head again. He was making it very difficult to sleep but I and my growing headache and lack of sleep out in the desert were winning the battle.

“Not more than once.”

“You’re an idiot, idiot,” I said, slapping his hand. Now he threw popcorn at me. I was going to be picking it out of my pants for weeks. I could have hidden at least two of those tubs of popcorn under each leg of my pants. “Imagine that, it’s raining popcorn.

“Dumbass.”

“Idiot. That’s three times,” I smirked, and closed my eyes at last.

“Only you,” was the last thing I heard him say, half laughing.


End file.
